'Blindsighted' Grant County #1 by Karin Slaughter

With a surname like 'Slaughter' what else could she have become, other than a crime writer (and/or butcher)?...

The small Georgia town of Heartsdale is rocked when part-time coroner and pediatrician, Sara Linton, discovers Sibyl Adams body in the bathroom of the local diner. Sibyl has been brutally raped and left to bleed out from several stab wounds. Jeffrey Tolliver is the town's police chief and Sara's ex-husband, and it is up to him to fit the pieces of this horrendous crime together - a task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that Sibyl was the twin of one of Tolliver's coworkers, officer Lena Adams. The plot thickens when Sara discovers another body - pulling her further into the investigation of a potential serial killer.

This is the first of 7 books in Karin Slaughter's 'Grant County' series and I loved it! I have gone out to my local library and borrowed the next 6 books (as well as 2 spin-off series also set in the Grant County world). I was totally sucked in form the very beginning - not just with the crime itself, but the tumultuous relationship of Sara & Jeffrey. Since this is really my first foray into crime fiction I really appreciated having the romance on the side to occasionally relieve from some of the very gory and chilling scenes. The story is alternately told from 3 different perspectives - Sara Linton, Jeffrey Tolliver and Lena Adams. So when given free reign each character can potentially drag scenes down in medical or procedural jargon and expose - I was just really relieved to occasionally have a lull in the murder mystery to step back and examine the human drama of the characters involved.

That being said, I became increasingly frustrated with Lena's perspective. Even though it was her sister that was murdered, I really did not like her character and found myself rolling my eyes whenever I had to trudge through her narrative.

I also didn't particularly warm to Chief Tolliver. I think my not liking him was very calculated though. 'Blindsighted' is set 2 years after Jeffrey and Sara divorced because he was caught cheating. Neither character goes into great depth about the split, which is very frustrating, doubly so when the characters actions don't always coincide with their thoughts and feelings about one another. I was left wondering why Sara was still bothering with her lousy ex and wanting to hit Jeffrey over the head with a large object.

4.5/5