Fractured

Nothing gets more nerve wreck- thrilling than a race against time, with a game of life and death involved and that too of an innocent teenage girl. And trust me; this line up doesn’t get more gripping than when it is coming from Karin Slaughter. Fractured is suspense personified as a novel that has enough power to keep you hooked all night and has all the qualities of a good story.

The story sets off when Abigail Campano comes back to her home in a rather desirable locality of Ansley Park, Atlanta to find the bloodied body of her teenage daughter in her bedroom and kills the guy standing next to the body, with her bare hands. The plot quickens as the body is identified not to be the Campano girl and a hunt begins to save her life, wherever she is.

Fractured is the second from Slaughter’s Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta series. The protagonist is the dyslexic but highly talented Special Agent Will Trent. Trent partners up with Atlanta Homicide Detective Faith Mitchell, who has her own reservations following Trent’s investigation resulting in the firing of Mitchell’s cop mom in a narcotics case. While Trent tries to hide away his shortcomings and live up to this rather disturbing case that somehow brings back his past in front of him, Faith tries to focus on the investigation, trying to ignore her apprehensions against Will and his bossy attitude.

Fractured is, like Slaughters other novels, not just a story of crime but of the people associated with it. The story beautifully encapsulates how life’s highs and lows can affect personalities and more often than not, leave many souls fractured. The account is face paced, the writing is witty and the suspense is infused naturally as you flip page after page in the want for more. An apparently simple tale that goes deep as it progresses till you can touch the souls it talks about, Fractured is truly Karin Slaughter's work.

For Slaughter’s first novel on Georgia Bureau of Investigation, featuring Will Trent; check out Triptych