Fallen
Karin Slaughter

Delacorte
June 2011/ ISBN 9780345528209
Suspense / Police
Amazon

Reviewed by Bob Walch

For Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Special Agent Faith Mitchell this is not a typical hostage situation. For starters, there’s a dead man in the house’s laundry room and a gangland standoff unfolding in the bedroom. But more to the point, this is all happening in Faith’s mother’s house.

Fortunately, the child whom Faith’s mother is babysitting, the agent’s four month old daughter, is found safe in a tool shed behind the house but Faith’s mother has gone missing. Although she’s been trained to remain cool in any and all situations, obviously this is one situation Faith has never confronted before.

To find her missing mother and piece together what has happened in her family home, Faith will enlist the assistance of her partner, Will Trent, and trauma doctor Sara Linton. Suddenly more than just a cop, Faith finds herself a “concerned party” in the affair, a witness, and, yes, even a suspect in the case.

While you’d expect she’d have the full support and cooperation of the department in this time of need, that’s not exactly what transpires. Sara quickly finds herself confronting people she once respected and trusted as she faces some nasty realities about corruption, bribery and murder within the law enforcement network.

Karin Slaughter has placed her characters in some pretty extreme situations but none of her previous stories has gone to this length to test the mettle of the protagonist. There’s a reason that Slaughter has been called “one of the best crime novelists in America” and after you’ve read “Fallen” you’ll agree she deserves that accolade.