Lawyer's Reviews > Blindsighted

Blindsighted: Karin Slaughter's first Sara Linton novel

And the publishers announce:

First there was Patricia Cornwell!



THEN there was Kathy Reichs!



NOW GET READY FOR KARIN SLAUGHTER!


Karin Slaughter

Welcome to Grant County, Georgia. Don't look for it on a Georgia map. It isn't there. And in this fictional County, there's a fictional town. It's a small town called Heartsdale, somewhere around Madison, but before you hit Augusta.

Eddie Linton and Daughters is a plumbing company in town. But it should be Linton and Daughter. Tessa works with her father. Sara grew up and went to medical school and became a pediatrician.

After medical school Sara returns home and takes over the town medical clinic. The nearest hospital is in Augusta. She married Jeff Tolliver, the County Sheriff, but divorced him after he cheated on her with the town sign painter.

Life's complicated when your Ex is the Sheriff and you're not only the town's pediatrician, but also the County Coroner. You bump into your Ex a lot more than you might like. Actually, Jeff wouldn't mind patching things up. After all, he only had that affair because he wanted Sara to need him as much as he needed her. Uh-huh. What? Could this be a new genre? "Crimance?"

Sara definitely doesn't want Jeff back in her life. She's dated the town pharmacist, Jeb, off and on. It hasn't been anything serious. Sara really doesn't have the time.

Things turn nasty when Sara has lunch with her sister Tessa down at Pete's Diner. She steps into the bathroom to wash her hands and finds herself in the middle of a crime scene. Sybil Adams is sitting on the john. Someone has carved a cross into her. Sybil dies in convulsions in Sara's arms as she bleeds out on the bathroom floor.

From whence does the title come? Why, from Belladonna from the Italian meaning "beautiful woman." Traditionally the plant was used to cause dilation of the pupils to make a woman appear more seductive. Use too much of the stuff, you become so sensitive to light you can see nothing, and it's a powerful hallucinogenic, causing paralysis, loss of memory, and convulsions.


Belladona

Sybil was blind. Hmmm...in Roman mythology Sybil was a "Seeress." Well, maybe it was just a coincidental choice and not an attempt at irony. She was a professor at the small college. She was also a lesbian. Was it a hate crime? More conflict rises because her sister Lena is one of Sheriff Tolliver's Detectives. She's out to find her own justice for her sister's death.

Sara's autopsy reveals that Sybil was also raped and sodomized. A second victim is found draped across Sarah's car. She had been crucified in x form, and repeatedly raped and sodomized. She was also stabbed. Sara prevents her death by cracking her chest and massaging her heart. When this young woman begins to tell of her experience, Jeff realizes he's got an escalating serial rapist/killer on his hands.

Slaughter relentlessly turns up the pace when Jeff's detective Lena, Sibyl's sister is the next woman to disappear. Slaughter has the ability to keep you flipping the pages to see what happens next.

Could Sara be the next victim, Jeff worries. Can he find his missing detective?

Blindsighted is a decent series debut. Karin Slaughter has sold a gazillion books. The book blurbs glow.

BUT: I wish I could have liked this book more. The herrings herein are very, very, red. There's the homophobic doper. And a ridiculous stab at an incident of token racism, when some townsmen assume that an aged black man musta dun it. OH, PLEASE! C'MON!

I anticipated the identity of the perp long before the end. While on the surface of things, Sara appears proficient in her forensic skills, she is a pediatrician, not a pathologist. If Sara ever makes it to court, it wouldn't be pretty. Oh. Dang. Spoiler alert: If the perp never survives, you don't have to worry about witness qualification.

And, by the way, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a death investigation division with either four to five regional laboratories staffed with pathologists. Georgia uses a Medical Examiner System. The Coroner calls for an autopsy, but bodies are transported to the labs for the autopsies. Now, I do understand that six Georgia counties are not covered by GBI, so considering Grant County is fictional anyway, well, heck this is a work of fiction. Interestingly, Slaughter also refers to Sara as a medical examiner in one paragraph in which she also calls her a coroner.

I'm jaded. Twenty-eight years in a District Attorney's Office will do that to you. If you think I'm too hard in my assessment of Karin Slaughter, don't get me started on John Grisham. D.A. does NOT stand for dumb ass, Mr. Grisham.

One thing I must acknowledge. Karin Slaughter has the dynamics of rape and men who rape down with great accuracy. For the dialogue, pacing, and that knowledge, I give this 3.5 our of five stars.

Having said all that, of course I already have the second book in the series. I admit I like it when the good guys win.