Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, paediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach.
When a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, it becomes clear that Sybil's brutal murder wasn't a one-off attack. What Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver are dealing with is a seasoned sexual predator. A violent serial killer...
Okay. For a long while I have been put off reading this author purely because of her name. Pathetic, isn't it? The reason I picked this book up is because I have been lending and passing books on to a friend of mine (well, not passing books on, per se...more like buying them for her) for some time and she has been nagging me to read this one. So, in the end, I relented.
And I'm not disappointed. I found the novel gripping, even found it stopping me turning the light off to go to sleep so I could read just one more chapter...I liked the characters, both rounded and believable, I enjoyed the plot and I enjoyed the pace.
Yes, I guessed 'whodunnit' quite early into the book, but this didn't spoil it too much - in fact, when the culpable party was revealed, it was almost in such a way that you felt the author was saying 'You already knew this, though'. I didn't feel that she believed her readers were morons.
All in all, quite a good thriller, and I'll certainly read the next one, Kisscut before too long. I think I'm going to read The Other Hand by Chris Cleave next. We'll see how that goes.
7/10 - worth having a look at if you like character-driven serial killer crime fiction.