A Faint Cold Fear - Hardcover

Slaughter, Karin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688174582 ISBN 13: 9780688174583

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 2003

Synopsis

Investigating an apparent suicide at a local college, medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver become increasingly suspicious after two subsequent suicides and an attack on a coed, a situation that becomes personal when a former officer is discovered with important information.

About this title

Review:

A Faint Cold Fear shares many of the characters and preoccupations of Karin Slaughter's earlier books about small-town coroner Sara Linton; she is still caught up in a complicated relationship with her former lover, police chief Jeffery, and disapproval of his sometimes brutal methods. Lena, once Jeffery's most trusted employee, is now a security guard at the local college and coping no better with the murder of her sister and her own abduction and rape. This becomes relevant when Jeffery has to investigate a series of murders on campus and one of the main suspects is Lena's dangerous skinhead lover.

Slaughter perhaps relies a little too heavily on a number of continuing story lines, and has constantly to fill new readers in on these characters' personal stories so far. Her principal strength is an absolute ruthlessness with technical detail--she teases out the significance or otherwise of the numerous unpleasant features of, for example, the apparent suicide that is the first of a sequence of suspicious deaths.

These are powerful and effective books because they remind us that death, including murder, is never pretty and that those who deal with it have to develop a hardness that is not always sympathetic; at her best, Slaughter has a convincing emotional grittiness. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Engrossing... [with] meticulous characterizations."--People

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0688174582
• ISBN 13: 9780688174583
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1