Tag: Georgia

Review 2628: #RIPXX: Fallen

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When Will Trent’s partner Faith Mitchell goes to her mother’s house to pick up her baby, Emma, she can see something is wrong. Loud music is playing inside and there is blood on the door handle. When she goes to the shed to get her mother’s gun, the gun is gone and the baby is locked inside.

Entering the house, she finds a dead man in the laundry room. She is forced to shoot a man in the bedroom and another one threatening the neighbor’s kids in the next yard. Her mother is gone.

Faith can’t be on the case, but Will and his boss Amanda Wagner have different ideas about what’s going on. Amanda is sure the incident has to do with gang activity, as Evelyn Mitchell used to be in charge of the narcotics squad. But Will can’t help thinking it may have to do with the case he investigated against her squad for skimming drug money. Evelyn was not prosecuted like the others but retired. Will has always thought she was guilty, and a large amount of money has never been found.

On the personal side, his relationship with Sara Linton is heating up just as his wife Angie has reappeared after months of absence.

This novel is the fifth in the Will Trent series and is full of action. I like Will, but I am thinking of stopping, and I have several reasons for that. One is his relationship with Sara Linton. She was apparently a main character from a previous series, and Slaughter has brought her into this one slowly, starting with the third book. My problem with her is that Slaughter hasn’t really bothered much with developing her character, having presumably developed it in the previous series, and I haven’t read the previous series. Plus, we haven’t seen much of Angie at all in the series, but in this book she is so horrible that you can’t imagine anyone staying with her. I think Slaughter is just using her as a device. Also, a little romance in this kind of novel is okay, but there’s an awful lot of emphasis on it in this book.

Finally, this took longer to occur to me than it should have, but this is Atlanta, Georgia, yet all of the principal characters in this novel are White, except for the bad guys. I had some difficulty in my brief bit of research finding data for 2011, the publication date of the book, but Atlanta is about 50% Black in population. The GBI doesn’t publicize its statistics, but the current demographics of the APD exactly meet the percentage of Black people in the community. Back in 2011, the APD was about 30% Black, and in 2010 there were about a third more Black people than White people in the city (statistics may be different for the greater Atlanta area). Yet, there’s not a single Black or Hispanic main character in this book. The TV series has taken care of this by making Will Hispanic and both his boss and partner Black. In fact, the only main White characters are a much nicer Angie and Angie’s partner Ormewood (no Sara).

So, is Slaughter a bigot or writing for what she thinks her audience wants? (2011 isn’t that long ago.) I was also irked by how Faith has spent two books not eating when she is having trouble with her diabetes. Come on! In any case, with Sara moving in and this belated realization, I’m moving out. Let me add, though, that Slaughter writes a truly suspenseful, exciting book.

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Review 2522: Broken

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A women is walking around a lake on a freezing day. Suddenly, she is knocked down, her head forced into the mud.

Officer Lena Adams is investigating a report of a suicide at the lake. The police have found a pair of shoes on the shore and a note that says, “I want it over.” Eventually, they pull up the body of a woman who has been weighed down with cement bricks and chains.

Her ID says she is Allison Spooner, a student at the nearby campus. The death is possibly a suicide, but she was stabbed in the back of the neck, which would almost be impossible to do to yourself.

With an officer dispatched to the girl’s home, Lena and her boss, Frank Wallace, go there to continue the investigation. Lena can tell that Frank has been drinking, and when the police find a young man in the garage listed as Allison’s address, the situation is bungled, resulting in the stabbing of Brad, a young officer, and injuries to both Lena and Frank.

Dr. Sara Linton now enters the story. She has returned home for Thanksgiving for the first time since her husband Jeffrey’s death. She blames Lena, who was Jeffrey’s partner, for the death. The first evening, Frank calls to ask her to come to the jail because Tommy Braham has been arrested for murder and he is hysterical. Sara vaguely remembers Tommy as a cheerful boy of limited intelligence, but this is oddly the second call she has received about Tommy. When she gets to the jail, she finds Tommy is dead, having cut his wrists using a pen refill cartridge.

Will Trent has had his holiday leave canceled so that he can investigate the custody death. He finds a sullen crew of small-town police who are not at all cooperative. Lena has wanted to admit to the mistakes she made at both the arrest and custody sites, but she has been threatened by Frank to follow the story he’s made up.

Very quickly Will finds problems with the small-town team’s theory of the crime. They think Tommy killed Allison in her garage apartment and took her to the lake, but Will quickly finds the crime scene at the lake and also discovers that Tommy was in his own home when they arrested him.

I can see where the relationship is going between Will and Sara, and I’m not that happy about it. Sara was apparently a major figure in a previous series by Slaughter, and Slaughter has brought her into this series. Perhaps it’s because I like Angie, Will’s long-time love, from the TV series. I don’t see her as the negative figure Slaughter seems to be making her. Same with Lena, since I don’t know what she did in the previous series.

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Review 2449: The House Next Door

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Colquitt and Walter Kennedy are dismayed when they hear that the lot next door in their wealthy Atlanta neighborhood is being built on. They have relished it as a green buffer and have been assured that no one can built on it. However, the new owners have apparently found someone who can, Kim Dougherty, a young architect. Colquitt is the first to admit that the house he builds is strikingly unusual and beautiful. In fact, she understands its beauty much better than do the owners, Pie and Buddy Harrelson. As the house goes up, Colquitt and Walter develop a friendship with Kim.

I read this novel because I heard it was a good ghost story, but it’s not a ghost story as such—rather a haunting. As the house goes up, the bodies of small animals, ripped apart, appear, including that of Pie’s puppy. Pie falls down some unprotected stairs and has a miscarriage. When Kim finishes the house and moves on to other projects, he reports being unable to work. The Kennedys think he’s just burnt out and needs a rest, but he says it’s the house, that it takes whatever you value most. Then, on the night of the Harrelsons’ house-warming party, a dreadful event occurs.

When the next family moves in. Buck and Anita Sheehan, Colquitt feels that Anita looks haunted. The neighborhood soon finds out that Anita spent time in a mental hospital after the couple’s son died in the Vietnam War. (The novel was written in the 1970s.) Soon enough, Colquitt and eventually Walter start to believe that Kim may be right about the house. The problem is what to do about it.

I am not familiar with Siddons, so I don’t know if she generally writes about the privileged. The Kennedys are not wealthy according to themselves, but they both have generous salaries and they live among the rich. There are times when the novel reflects a sort of exclusiveness and self-satisfaction that is not flagrant but is there. The Kennedys run into a class wall when they try to warn people about the house, but all this surfaces at the end in an unusual way.

The ending of this novel takes a startling turn that opens up the reader’s interpretations of the actions of the novel and makes you rethink. I think this put it higher in my regard than it would have if it had gone where I expected it to. It made me reconsider the whole story.

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Review 2316: Undone

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Will Trent has taken his partner Faith Mitchell to the hospital because she passed out. While he is waiting, an ambulance brings in a woman who has been hit by a car. She is naked and has obviously been kept captive somewhere and been tortured. Even more horribly, her eleventh rib has been removed.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has to be invited into a case, but Will drives to the crime scene, which is only being investigated near the road. The police try to send him away, but he enters the nearby woods to try to find where the woman was escaping from. He finds a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of plywood. Inside the man-made cave, he finds indications that two women were there. Eventually, he finds a second woman hanging upside down from a tree, dead. This woman has been blinded.

Back at the hospital, the doctor, Sara Linton (who apparently is the heroine of a different series by Slaughter), tells Faith she is diabetic. This condition is complicated because Faith is also pregnant.

For his part, Will has married his lover Angie, but she took off almost immediately afterwards. To his dismay, Will finds Sara, a widow, attractive.

As Will and Faith try to identify the victims, with the local police withholding evidence, another woman disappears. Because she physically resembles both victims, Will and Faith think she might be another victim of the same person.

This is another fast moving and interesting entrant to this series about a dyslexic detective and his partner.

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Review 2270: Fractured

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Fractured is Slaughter’s second novel featuring Will Trent, the dyslexic detective from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

When wealthy Abigail Campano returns home early from her lunch date, she finds the window by her front door smashed and her teenage daughter lying dead at the top of the stairs with her apparent attacker standing over her holding a knife. In the resulting struggle, Abigail and the man with the knife both fall downstairs, and Abigail manages to kill him.

The Atlanta police have trampled all over the crime scene before Will Trent arrives to determine whether the GBI should be involved in the case. It’s Will who discovers the young man had been stabbed before Abigail arrived and was trying to help the girl. Then Paul Campano arrives and realizes the girl is not his daughter Emma at all but probably Kayla, her best friend.

Unfortunately, Will grew up with Paul in a children’s home. Paul was a bully then and is extremely aggressive now.

The Atlanta police are taken off the case, but Will’s boss attaches Faith Mitchell from the APD to work with Will. It takes him a while to realize that she is the granddaughter of a woman who was forced to retire after Will caught six of her APD officers stealing drug money.

The case becomes a kidnapping case, beginning with a search to identify the dead man. The Campanos have never seen him before. What was he doing in their house and where is Emma?

This novel is another exciting entry in this well-written and carefully plotted series. Will is an interesting character, and Faith begins to respect his abilities.

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Review 2178: Triptych

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I have to admit, I looked for this first Will Trent novel after getting hooked on the TV series. Just a little warning: if you have already watched the series, the TV folks have made one major change from the book that may surprise you.

In Atlanta, young teenage girls have been found after being raped, beaten, and having their tongues either partially or completely bitten off. Detective Michael Ormewood is called out to a similar case, only this time the woman is dead, and she’s not a teenage girl but a middle-aged prostitute.

The next day, Ormewood meets Will Trent, a Special Agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He will be working the case with Ormewood. Will is unusual because he is dyslexic, although he tries to keep this problem a secret.

In the meantime, John Shelley has been recently released from prison, where he served 25 years for a similar crime, committed when he was 16. John has always maintained his innocence, right up to his last parole hearing when he wanted to get out before his mother died of cancer. John has been out for only a short time when he learns that someone has stolen his identity, but curiously, used it to apply for credit cards and buy things while keeping a good credit score.

Angie Polaski, a detective on the vice squad, has gotten peripherally involved in the investigation. She has ties to both Ormewood and Trent that she’s keeping secret.

This is a well-written, fast-paced novel that is part mystery, part thriller. It has interesting characters, and I enjoyed it very much.

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Review 1417: The Web of Days

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

I think it is interesting to reread a book I read long ago to see if or how my reaction to it has changed. This can work both ways—I can appreciate a book I disliked the first time or see the flaws in a book I loved. I remember reading the gothic romance The Web of Days when I was a teenager, borrowed from a neighbor’s house for whom I was babysitting. After the kids went to bed, I would pull it out for the next installment. I liked the book and had a crush on its romantic hero. So, what did I think this time? More about that later.

Hester Snow arrives from the North at Seven Chimneys, a ruined plantation on one of the sea islands of Georgia just after the Civil War. She is to be a governess for Rupert LeGrand, the son of the owner of the plantation, Saint Clair LeGrand. At the house she finds an indifferent master; his mother Madame, who cares only for her food; and his wife Lorelei, who drinks too much. The house is slovenly, the fields are ruined, and the servants are insolent.

Hester believes that with hard work and oversight, Seven Chimneys could be made profitable again, and she soon seeks permission from LeGrand to see to it. When she begins to find herself successful, she becomes obsessed with seeing the plantation thrive and making a home for herself. What she doesn’t see is the truth behind the relationships between the family members at Seven Chimneys.

She is attracted to Roi, Saint’s dashing bastard half brother, but he offers a life in a cabin in Missouri. Hester thinks that will be a harsh life of drudgery and wants nothing to do with it.

First of all, this novel is so racist it took my breath away. It’s hard to tell if Lee was trying to depict the time as it was or was racist herself. However, Hester herself is racist. Even though she comes to like a couple of the African-American characters, she treats more than one of them despicably, and they are all stereotypical.

Second, in other ways Hester is not at all likable, being so obsessed with succeeding on the plantation and feeling herself so superior to the southern characters. In many ways, except for not being evil, she reminds me of the main character in one of Philippa Gregory’s early series, Wideacre. She acts fairly reprehensibly up to the very end of the novel, when she has a change of heart. Frankly, she does not deserve her happy ending.

Did I like the book? It is well written and atmospheric. It has some suspenseful scenes, and Hester finds herself in a corner. But no, not only is the racism too much for me, but the regionalism is, too, because Lee depicts most southerners as loafing crackers (she even uses the word), greedy vulgar businessmen, or effete, elitist aristocrats. This is not at all the book I remembered reading.

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Day 371: A Good Hard Look

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Cover for A Good Hard LookA Good Hard Look is a novel about the last few years of writer Flannery O’Connor’s life. The book begins with the wedding of Cookie Himmel and Melvin Whiteson, which Cookie believes has been ruined because Flannery’s peacocks made so much noise the night before that Cookie fell out of bed and gave herself a black eye. Flannery’s mother Regina insists that Flannery attend the wedding, but Cookie is not happy to see her there.

Lona Waters lives her life absentmindedly and takes pleasure only in the hour of solitude she has every day before her daughter Gina comes home from school. Then her friend Miss Mary asks her if she will give her awkward teenage son Joe a job, thereby eliminating her hour.

Soon Melvin Whiteson has struck up a friendship with Flannery, but he keeps it a secret from his wife because of her dislike of the writer. Cookie is busily serving on committees in town and trying to get Flannery’s books banned from the library, while Melvin, a successful New York banker who gave up his career to move to this small town in Georgia with Cookie, is feeling out of place and bored with his insurance job.

These seemingly mundane stories eventually result in tragedies that force the main characters to take a good hard look at themselves, as Flannery states is a technique she uses in her fiction.

The novel is well written but not evocative. It does not evoke the 60’s South, and my feeling is that it does not evoke Flannery O’Connor. I am not an expert on her or her life, but the incisive spirit I would expect from her is missing in this character. Napolitano uses O’Connor’s peacocks to great effect, but I found that the novel tidied things up a bit more neatly than I would expect from one inspired by O’Connor’s life and works. Finally, the character of Cookie is essentially a caricature of the southern junior matron, similar to Hilly Holbrook in The Help, although Cookie evolves a bit. Most of the other characters are only sketchily drawn.

It is rather risky to use an actual person as a main character in a novel, especially if you are not able to create a character who is convincing as that person. For a much better attempt at using a famous writer as a main character, see Colm Toíbín’s wonderful The Master.