A Faint Cold Fear FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues - and the college authorities are eager to avoid a scandal - but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up.
Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home. And as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information. But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the next victim.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In the coldly captivating tradition of Cornwell and Reichs, Slaughter (Blindsighted; Kisscut) returns to Grant County, Ga., to offer a third installment in the adventures of smalltown pediatrician and part-time medical examiner Sara Linton. Called in to investigate the apparent suicide of a male Grant Tech student, Sara brings along her pregnant sister, Tessa, who wanders away from the scene and is brutally attacked. The distraught Sara must work side by side with her ex-husband, Det. Jeffrey Tolliver, whom she loves despite his past infidelity, but it's Lena Adams, formerly a cop and now a campus security guard, whose story the novel follows most closely. Still mourning the murder of her sister and recovering from her own torture and rape by the same man, Lena is looked on with suspicion by her ex-boss, Jeffrey. With reason: she's hiding a few key facts. The dead boy's mother is her therapist and Lena is involved with an abusive young man with a shady past. Campus gossip Richard Carter further confuses investigators; meanwhile, police discover the bodies of two more students, their deaths potentially suicides but more likely murder. Slaughter provides grisly variations on the themes of sibling rivalry, sexual abuse and campus politics in a story not for the faint of heart. Readers who can stomach gruesome details and like fitting together multiple stories of physical and psychological abuse will savor the way Slaughter can evoke sympathy for perverse, even criminal, behavior by tracing its origins, and those who make it through the complexities and the gore will be rewarded with a satisfyingly chilling ending. (Oct.) Forecast: A Faint Cold Fear was recently selected as the second International Book of the Month (Harlan Coben's No Second Chance was the first), so look for this thriller to hit bestseller lists both here and overseas. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver are up against a bunch of suspicious campus suicides. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
AudioFile
The third in the Grant County series is set in a small town in Georgia. Sara, the central character of the story, is the medical examiner of Heartsdale. In this story much of the plot is woven around people who are integral members of Sara's life. Dana Ivey does a superb job of character identification through her variations in voice, which provide subtle insight into the characters' struggles. The story is not without graphic description. However, a complex plot and conclusion make this an interesting listen. S.K.P. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Lena Adams, the cop-turned-security-guard whose twin sister was murdered in the opening scene of Slaughter's striking debut (Blindsighted, 2001), takes center stage in this third volume. Readers familiar with the gruesome doings in Grant County, Georgia, may be lulled into a false sense of security when the opening calls pediatrician/medical examiner Sara Linton (Kisscut, 2002) to the scene of nothing worse than the apparent suicide of Andy Rosen, a Grant Tech student who took a header from a bridge. But Sara's cool examination of the corpse is only the prelude to the real horror that comes when Tessa, the very pregnant sister she's brought along for the ride, steps into the woods and is savagely attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. As Sara alternates between hovering over Tessa's hospital bed and listening to her conscientious parents tell her it wasn't her fault, the investigation explodes in a sequel violent enough to make Lena check out the sex-and-drugs Grant Tech scene on her own, bringing her face to face once more with the nightmare of her abduction and rape-and enough to make Sara think twice about that suicide verdict. Though the plot tails off in complications that make this the least coherent and satisfying in the series so far, Slaughter keeps baring her living characters' psychic wounds in scene after scene with a remarkable intensity the reigning postmortem specialists, Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, can't match. Author tour. Agent: Victoria Sanders
Home
