Rating: 
Summary: graphic violence, well-plotted
Review: The setting is a small college campus in the small town of Heartsdale, Georgia. The story opens with a student's apparent suicide and the stabbing of the protagonist's sister. More suspicious suicides follow and violence permeates Grant College. This is the third in the series featuring medical examiner Sara Linton, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, and ex-police detective Lena Adams. Sara and Jeffrey were once married, but are still involved romantically with other. Lena was victim of a horrific crime in KISSCUT, and is still emotionally broken in A FAINT COLD FEAR. It really helps if you read the previous novels to understand all these characters are going through. The characters are fully drawn and three-dimensional with both good and bad traits just like most people. I wish the violence was less graphic, but the story was very involving and quite suspenseful. It's a fast-paced book that is hard to put down until the very end.
Rating: 
Summary: The best from Karin Slaughter
Review: This is the 3rd book in Karin Slaughter's series about pediatrician and ME Sara Linton. It is the best of the 3, but still not a 5-star read. The characters are still a little bit annoying, and the plots are still a little bit too much like Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, but that said, I enjoyed A Faint Cold Fear, and found it well written and myself guessing nearly to the end.
Sara has to examine an apparent college-suicide, and everything is going well until her sister Tessa is stabbed and nearly killed. Tessa is pregnant, and her boyfriend is black. When Sara and her ex husband, Chief of Police Jefferey Tolliver, discovers that the suicide was Jewish, speculation starts. Was it really a suicide, or was it murder. Could it all be connected through some racist-thing, are there white supremacists on campus or is it all coincidental? Working sometimes against, sometimes with Sara and Jeffrey we find Lena Adams, one of Jefferey Tollivers former detectives, who are now licking her wounds after a brutal rape, working as a campus security guard. Lena Adams is brought into the investigation because it seems like she knows something is going on around campus.
It is not until the final pages we find out what really happened, and all the way to the end of this book you will find yourself entertained, but there is a risk you will find some of the characters, specially Lena Adams, a little "too much" sometimes.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the Four-Part Grant Co Series
Review: This is the third book in the Grant County series beginning with Blindsighted and Kisscut and ending with Indelible. It is a slightly more interesting read because the story line is a bit more intriguing and complex. The ending does have its surprises. However, more so than with many authors, reading the books in order is, if not mandatory, certainly helpful in understanding all that happens.
Most of the characters have appeared in the previous two novels, but new and often sinister facts come to light. Former Detective Lena Adams and now campus security guard is the central character in this go around. As in all of the other novels, the character depictions and interactions seem a little off. Lena remains traumatized from a rather egregious incident in her fairly recent past, but her dealings with an ex-skinhead on campus are hard to understand. And then there is the constant bickering between Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver and his ex-wife Dr. Sara Linton despite their professed love for each other. It is almost grating.
There is no doubt that the novel can get a little gruesome in describing all of the violence and death that occur. Perhaps it could be said that the author does not shrink from hard reality in not only describing physical violence that can be perpetrated but also in bringing to light life's daily miscommunications and misunderstandings.
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING FOLLOW-UP
Review: This is the third installment in Slaughter's Grant County series featuring Sara Linton. The story moves at a fast pace, never letting you go. A page-turner. If characterization and realistic dialogue are key to what you enjoy most out of your fiction, Slaughter is the author for you to try. I found her first book engrossing and her second book was a page-turner. The third is no different. She is an author to watch. I find her style unique and original. She is one of the few authors that I anticipate a new novel from and buy & read without reading reviews. She is not overrated as some reviewers have stated. I find her voice refreshing and yes, the violence level was extremely high in this book but overall, it did not shadow my enjoyment whatsoever. Lena's still struggling to find peace within herself and might have stepped over the line in this installment. She meets her match in Ethan, who seems to identify with her on some level that only the two of them understand. The friendship and respect between Jeffrey Tolliver and Lena Adams is stretched thin here stemming from events from the previous installment and in this book as well. At times it was exhausting to see Lena's struggle to find herself, to come to grips with her past. Sara Linton and her ex-husband, Jeff Toliver are still together and might even be thinking of marriage again. Their romance is nice. If this is your first time hearing of Karin Slaughter, this is not the book to start with and I recommend that you read them in order to get a better feel for the atmosphere, the characters. I am amazed that a few reviewers who posted seemed to think that the characters are unlikable. I don't agree. Slaughter is only one of the few writers who puts out thrillers with the emphasis on her characters. She gets great endorsements from authors I've enjoyed and respected like Michael Connelly who I just discovered this year and love. My grade was an A. Outstanding follow-up to last year's KISSCUT and I look forward to INDELIBLE. If I had any problems with this installment---it was the violence. It was excessive and often I wondered if the author was trying to see how much she could gross us out as there were quite a few gross out moments. Overall, great book Ms. Slaughter. The series is very well written thus far. I only hope that the violence level is toned down in future books. Thank You.
Rating:
Summary: Suicide or murder?
Review: This the third book of the series around Dr. Sara Linton, her ex-husband Jeffery Tolliver and Lena Adams (now working for campus security at Grant Tech). Sara gets called upon to examine what appears to be a suicide of a college student. He seems to have jumped from a bride. A racial slur had been sprayed onto the bridge. Her highly-pregnant sister Tess is accompanying her to the site, heading for the shrubs to take a pee and gets stabbed. The boy who seems to have committed suicide was Jewish. The father of Tess's baby is an African-American. During the following days more so-called suicides occur. The question arises whether the "suicides" have merely happened coincidentally within such a short period of time or whether there might be some white supremacist thing behind the incidents. Lena seems to have and hold back information on the cases and is reluctant to help the police out. She is as stubborn as ever and pretty much of the story evolves around her, too: Still mentally and physically bruised from what happened to her in "Kisscut", she can't seem to live with herself, what was done to her and that she might even have enjoyed part of it despite better reasoning. At one point she even becomes a suspect... I thought, I had "nailed" the perp, but due to twists and surprise-turns, I was way off. There are just enough references in this book to enable readers, who haven't read the previous installments, to follow up what had happened without boring those who have read "Blindsighted" and "Kisscut". Result: "A Faint Cold Fear" is a great read, but to me it wasn't a 5-star-book like the first two in this series: Although it was a good thing to get to know the protagonists even better and see Sara's and Jeffrey's relationship getting on again, in my opinion Karin Slaughter needs to get away from focussing so much on Lena. She needs to put somebody else in the thick of things. But since the outcome/end of "A Faint Cold Fear" was very surprising and interesting, I am not only curious about what will happen in "Indelible" (which is going to be published in September) but also quite confident that it is going to be somebody else who is going to be up the pole! Keep going Mrs. Slaughter!
Rating: 
Summary: Was the editor asleep or...
Review: Was the editor asleep or merely ignorant? The same goes for Ms. Slaughter. The story was entertaining, but she needs to get some facts down. Reviewer Boettcher pointed out the painfully obvious confusion of rifle and shotgun. This is not terribly technical. I could not decide what flavor residency Sara completed. Was it surgical? Peds? And it is totally unrealistic to segue into forensic pathology (without residency training). I did enjoy the novel. Take heart Ms. Slaughter, James Patterson doesn't know that revolvers and pistols are not the same!
Rating:
Summary: Exciting but gory.
Review: When Sara Linton, the medical examiner in a small town and her ex husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver are called in to investigate the apparent suicide of a student from the local college, they find almost no clues but rely on a gut feeling that something doesn't ring true. That is the start of a series of horrific suicides and murders, including the attempted murder of Sara's sister.The author has plotted this story well and has made herself completely at home with autopsy proceedures but I found it to be just too graphic and gory for my taste. Perhaps it needs readers with stronger stomachs than mine.
Rating:
Summary: A Suspenseful Story with a Clever and Surprising Plot Twist
Review: With her earlier Grant County novels, BLINDSIGHTED and KISSCUT, Karin Slaughter has developed a reputation for imagining --- and describing in excruciating detail --- particularly grisly crimes. Her latest venture, A FAINT COLD FEAR, is not for the faint of heart either. Fans of novels by Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, as well as devotees of the CSI television series, will recognize the familiar territory of the crime scene and autopsy table in Slaughter's work. It's too easy, though, to dismiss Slaughter's suspense novels as mere vehicles for gratuitous violence; instead, these novels use violent crime as vehicles for exploring the psychological scars crime leaves not only on its victims but also on the professionals who deal with it every day. A FAINT COLD FEAR starts off with a bang, with the discovery of the body of Andy Rosen, a young man who apparently committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. When medical examiner Sara Linton's extremely pregnant sister is stabbed at the scene, though, Sara and her ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, refuse to believe the two crimes are unrelated. Soon Sara and Jeffrey are caught up in unraveling family secrets and campus politics, as their investigation leads them into the classrooms and labs at the large university that dominates life in their small Georgia town. Because of the personal nature of the crime, Sara spends her time not only tracking down a killer but also worrying about the health of her seriously wounded sister. In addition, she finds herself questioning not only her growing involvement with Jeffrey but also her professional choices. At the psychological heart of the story, however, is Lena Adams, the former cop who has turned to working for campus security following her inability to recover psychologically from her sister's murder and her own rape in an earlier novel. Lena inexplicably becomes romantically involved with a menacing young man with a violent past, who also is one of the key suspects in the current rash of violent crimes around campus. This self-destructive relationship is one venue in which the author explores the legacy and scars of domestic abuse, a theme that runs throughout the book. Although Slaughter spends a lot of pages exploring the ways in which Lena's status as victim continues to affect her life and work, gone is the navel-gazing that disrupted the flow and pacing of Slaughter's previous novel, KISSCUT. Instead, A FAINT COLD FEAR sustains a suspenseful trajectory, with just enough red herrings to keep readers guessing. Although some loose ends are tied up almost as afterthoughts, one key plot twist, cleverly dangled out to careful readers in the book's closing paragraphs, will surprise many and keep everyone on the edge of their seats awaiting the next installment in Slaughter's series. --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Rating:
Summary: Great Crime Story
Review: You get some twists, decent forensic information and tortured complex characters, but Karin Slaughter manages to write including all the expected cliches, with a breath of fresh air. You're actually interested in these characters lives, in the unfolding mystery and it's good, enjoyable, fast-paced crime writing.
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