Product Description

With over 13 million copies of her books sold in twenty-two countries, #1 internationally bestselling author Karin Slaughter delivers “crime fiction at its finest.” Now she returns to Grant county, Georgia where the lightning-fast plot, vivid forensic detail, and heart-stopping suspense will thrust readers into the darkest corners of their own imaginations—and push Slaughter to the top of the national bestseller lists.

Sara Linton—resident medical examiner/pediatrician in Grant County, Georgia,—has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara’s help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all. But soon Sara an Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day—until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #438843 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Released on: 2007-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At the start of bestseller Slaughter's bone-chilling sixth thriller in her Grant County, Ga., crime series (after 2005's Faithless), Dr. Sara Linton, the county's resident pediatrician and medical examiner, is mired in a devastating lawsuit, accused by grieving parents of indirectly causing the death of their terminally ill son. Then Sara and her husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, must travel to rural Reese, Ga., where Lena Adams, Jeffrey's often reckless detective, has been injured in an explosion that killed a local woman. Lena's mysterious escape from the hospital plunges her, Sara and Jeffrey into a dangerous web of meth trafficking, white supremacy groups and long-buried family secrets. Expertly shifting back and forth in both time and point of view, Slaughter builds the suspense to a perfect crescendo, connecting every loose plot strand in a devastating and unforgettable climax. With methamphetamine use on the rise in the country, Slaughter's unflinching portrayal of lives ruined by the drug make her latest a timely and unsettling read. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. US Version

From Booklist
After producing last year's stand-alone thriller TripTych, Slaughter returns with the sixth entry in the series that has propelled her onto best-seller lists. The Grant County novels, featuring pediatrician/medical examiner Sara Linton, her police chief husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, and Detective Lena Adams, combine suspenseful plots, gritty social realism, and graphic forensic detail. Here Lena returns to the poverty-stricken rural backwater where she was raised to check on her uncle Hank, the tactiturn reformed junkie who raised her after her mother died. What she finds is a town decimated by methamphetamine addiction (including her long sober uncle), with the drug dealing controlled by skinheads and abetted by a corrupt sheriff's department. When she is forced to watch as her former childhood friend and neighbor, who has long battled addiction, is set on fire, she shuts down, convinced that her best recourse is to keep her mouth shut even as the local sheriff tries to get her to talk. That's when Jeffrey gets the call that his detective has been arrested. He and Sara, who is drained from fighting a grueling medical malpractice suit, are immediately drawn into the investigation, which leads to surprising revelations about some of the town's most upstanding citizens. In addition, Slaughter throws in a shocker of an ending that has serious implications for the future of the series. Slaughter's latest page-turner offers both wrenching emotional highs and lows and a gripping plot, but what gives it emotional heft is its unwavering focus on the grim social ills of the rural South. Wilkinson, Joanne

Review
“Bone-chilling.... Expertly shifting back and forth in both time and point of view, Slaughter builds the suspense to a perfect crescendo.”—Publishers Weekly, starred

“Offers both wrenching emotional highs and lows and a gripping plot.... A shocker of an ending.”—Booklist


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Talk about "Jumping the Shark"
Like many others who have reviewed this book, I was a great fan of the Grant County series. Like many others, I, too, feel betrayed and feel that the author has no regard for the feelings of the readers she had taken along on this journey for so many books. If she wanted to end the series, then just leave the three main characters alone and go on to something else. To do what she did to one of them, who was the heart and soul of this series, was totally unnecessary. She spoiled the series and took away the pleasure of rereading the earlier books. No more Karin Slaughter for me.

Low Return on Investment
I purchased this book at the airport as a diversion during a trip. Initially, I was intrigued and it was an easy read. However, as the book progressed, it became unfocused and unrealistic. What was the point of all the attention given to the lawsuit at the beginning of the book? It was never really part of the story and did not adequately explain the transformation of a strong, intelligent woman into a one-dimentional, clingy drone. And, as bodies begin to drop like flies (or, in some cases, get thrown through hotel windows), would no one actually consider bringing in reinforcements to address what is clearly a town out of control? Finally, the ending was more than unsatisfying. It was needlessly depressing and almost felt as though the last 5 pages were written by someone else or had gotten mixed in from another book. Did the author just get tired of writting and decide she had something else she needed to go do? Loyal fans might enjoy this book but anyone looking for a well-written, self-contained story with a logical ending might do well to keep looking. When I consider the time spent reading the book, I don't feel as though there was sufficient return on my investment to have made it worthwhile.

Don't Bother with Beyond Reach if You're a Fan
I've read all of the Sara and Jeffry series and was shocked that the author felt it necessary to give us the ending she did. I don't buy the theory that it gave realism to the story and don't care if they are "her characters", you don't do this when you have a loyal fan base invested in series characters. Thanks to everyone who gave the ending away, hopefully this will prevent others from wasting their money and buying this disappointment. There are hundreds of mystery/thriller writers out there as good as and better than Karin Slaughter - this is the last one of her books that I'll be buying.