I am delighted to be part of The Silent Wife blog tour. This is Karin Slaughter's 20th book and the celebration of 20 years of writing. I was also very lucky and privileged to be part of an online chat with Karin and a few other bloggers, where her passion and enthusiasm for writing really shone through. After all these years of writing Karin still loves being an author. She was very clear when she said that every book is a new opportunity to say something new, to write something different and to see a new side of a character. The Silent Wife is a perfect example of this. Here you see a new side to Sara and her relationship with Will and for all you Slaughter fans Jeffery is back!!
SYNOPSIS:
Atlanta, Georgia. Present day. A young woman is brutally attacked and left for dead. The police investigate but the trail goes cold. Until a chance assignment takes GBI investigator Will Trent to the state penitentiary, and to a prisoner who says he recognises the MO.
The attack looks identical to the one he was accused of eight years earlier. The prisoner’s always insisted that he was innocent, and now he’s sure he has proof. The killer is still out there.
As Will digs into both crimes it becomes clear that he must solve the original case in order to reach the truth. Yet nearly a decade has passed—time for memories to fade, witnesses to vanish, evidence to disappear. And now he needs medical examiner Sara Linton to help him hunt down a ruthless murderer. But when the past and present collide, everything Will values is at stake.
My Thoughts:
Confession time.
This is my first Karin Slaughter book!! I am mortified to be admitting that as where the hell have I been all these years? Of course I do have her books on my shelf but like a lot of book lovers my tbr pile is ridiculous and I just haven't got round to reading them. That will all change now. I can completely understanding why Karin Slaughter is a number one, international bestselling author as her writing just blew me away. The detail she puts into her writing is phenomenal. I have read a lot of crime fiction novels but none as realistic and profound as this one. Karin Slaughter you are clearly the queen of crime fiction and I applaud you.
Although this is book 10 in the Will Trent Series you can read it as a standalone. The characters are complex, three dimensional and realistic. Even though this is my first encounter of reading about these characters I was very aware that they all had a backstory, some of which were more complicated than others, but I felt I could pick up on their individual personalities immediately and get a real feel of their character.
The plot was very harrowing. It drew me in straight away with the brutal, violent killings that were taking place and I loved the way it was linked to a past crime. This provided a dual timeline where we got to see the Grant County Series intertwine with the Will Trent Series, a very clever technique and one I am sure will delight fans of both series.
There are so many cases where an innocent person has been sent to prison for a crime that they haven't committed and I loved how Slaughter used this angle in her novel, along with the theme of police corruption and violence. The main focus of this book however, centres around the crime of women being violently attacked and sexually assaulted. Slaughter writes with such detail that you cannot help but feel both horror and repulse as the victims are found and the crime scene examined. For all you Brits out there it was like reading an episode of Silent Witness which I was memorised by. You get a real feel that Slaughter has done her homework and knows not only the roles of the police and investigators but also those of the forensic examiners and pathologists. For me no stone was left upturned or corners cut in researching and writing this novel.
This novel kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time, I was completely hooked. I really appreciated how, just like Slaughter said in her video chat, she played fair with her readers with regards to revealing the killer. There were tiny clues that if you were clever enough you could piece them together to reach the conclusion as to who was behind this horrifying crime. And when you got to the end it all made sense, you could really understand the motive behind the crime and just how twisted that character was.
If like me you are a Karin Slaughter virgin I recommend that you jump right in and start reading her books, they are intense, shocking and tackle taboo subjects head-on. I thoroughly enjoyed reading My Silent Wife and feel very privileged to have been part of this tour. Many thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours, Liz Dawson, Harper Collins and to Karin Slaughter.
About The Author:
Karin Slaughter is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 120 countries with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her 19 novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant Sunday Times bestselling novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her.
The Good Daughter and Cop Town are in development for film and television and Pieces of Her is soon to be an eight-part Netflix adaptation, directed by Lesli Linka Glatter (Mad Men), and produced by Charlotte Stoudt (Homeland) and Bruna Papandrea (Big Little Lies).
Karin is the founder of the Save the Libraries project- a non-profit organisation established to support libraries and library programming.
She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
'One of the boldest thriller writers working today’ TESS GERRITSEN
‘Fiction doesn't get any better than this’ JEFFERY DEAVER
‘Passion, intensity, and humanity’ LEE CHILD
‘Her characters, plot, and pacing are unrivalled’ MICHAEL CONNELLY
‘A great writer at the peak of her powers’ PETER JAMES
'Karin Slaughter has – by far – the best name of all of us mystery novelists' JAMES PATTERSON