Monday, May 17, 2010

FRACTURED by Karin Slaughter (2008)


Apparently, Slaughter is the author's real name. It's almost laughable in a writer of thrillers.

In an upscale Atlanta neighborhood a teenaged girl is brutally murdered. When her mother Abigail comes home and discovers the newly bludgeoned corpse of what she believes to be her daughter and there is a young man kneeling over her covered in blood, she exacts her own form of vigilante justice. In abject terror she strangles the stranger to death.

Two cases of mistaken identity complicate the murders and Abigail discovers that the police believe her daughter has been abducted. In the matrix of forensic evidence, Detective Will Trent sees something that others do not. It is Will's conviction that Emma is still alive, being held ransom, if he could only figure out who may have abducted her and why.

What kept me interested in this mystery was the subplot thread of life in care and what happens to children who were raised in foster homes and how they transition to adult life and responsibility with varying degrees of success and functionality.

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