A Faint Cold Fear

Rating:
Summary: A real step down for Karin Slaughter.
Review: A Faint Cold Fear is ostensibly about a series of deaths that look like suicide, but could be murder, and the investigation into the connection between them. But this plot seems to be abandoned for great stretches of time so that we can wallow in the misery that is Lena Adams. She suffered a brutal rape in Blindsighted, the first novel, but the closing chapters of Kisscut suggested a beginning to her recovery.

No such luck. While you could not expect somebody to recover from something like what Lena went through, we delve into her mindset at the total expense of plot. It feels like the murders are there as an afterthought to try and tie this book into the lucrative "crime novel" market. Because I would not call this a crime novel. The crimes are solved in a totally "Scooby-Doo" manner, with an unintentionally funny surprise "Scooby-Doo" villian. The real focus is on Lena, her self-loathing and her continuing self-destruction. It got tiresome VERY quickly. I eventually started skim-reading Lena's chapters so I could get back to what I thought was a crime novel.

Blindsighted and Kisscut are disturbing, well-crafted thrillers and worth reading. But A Faint Cold Fear is a real step down. The crime aspect is woefully lacking, and the focus on Lena gets infuriating. But Slaughter's fans shouldn't give up hope - Indelible is a decent read, and Lena seems remarkably recovered.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't like it
Review: First book I have read from this author: too much gratuitous violence and the characters were never sympathetic....I kept on reading to find out what happened but would not read another from her.

Rating:
Summary: I think it was great!
Review: From other reviewers you can get the general jist of the story. I have read Karen Slaughter's other 2 books and this is definitely the best of the 3 (so far). I can definitely feel her growth as a writer in this one.

I know I like to read reviews here when I'm looking for a book to read so I'll put in my two cents worth and respond to some other points made here in these reviews.

I didn't find the characters annoying, I find what you don't know about them intriguing...but should we get to the "end" of the series someday and we know nothing...ok...that would be annoying, but I don't find that in her books. In each book she gives you a little more background on each character. Getting to know "all" about them requires watching them and hearing their thoughts as they go through their experiences. They are confronted with things they never expected to be confronted with in their lifetimes, and don't always respond as you "think" they will or as THEY thought they would.

Slaughters writing (to me) is satisfying but it's not tidy. You get the crime solved but not always totally. The characters stay sometimes in turmoil, or something you think was resolved resurfaces. I believe this all makes her writing and her characters more real...and her writing more interesting.

I don't find the violence excessive. Maybe I just know how she writes, she's detailed and yes, in detailing, it's graphic. You will leave a page with a definite picture of the crime scene. You won't have to use your imagination.

About the only thing about these books that kind of makes me chuckle and seems a bit of a stretch of my imagination, is that this series takes place in a small southern town where everyone knows each other. It's a bit of a stretch to believe that these horrific crimes happen over and over again and noone's got a clue. But hey, I'll get over it. I'm just glad I don't live there. <smile>.

Just my two cents for what is worth.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: I just recently finished Karin Slaughter's "A Faint Cold Fear" on the way back from Little Rock. Slaughter's career, I guess one could say, is still in it's childhood, if not infancy, but with this book she's had quite a growth spurt. In this, there are a rash of "suicides" on Grant Tech's campus. Dr. Sara Linton and her ex-husband Chief of Police Jeffrey Tolliver investigate. Meanwhile, ex-Detective Lena Adams, now campus security guard, becomes involved with a sexy, if not completely dangerous, ex-skinhead. Their relationship seems to thrive on violence and blood. Lena is rather self-destructive in this edition to Slaughter's Grant County series. It's as though she's having a regress of her healing after being brutally raped and nearly killed. Slaughter's plotting is brilliant and will take your head off like a shotgun blast. It is her plotting, more than her actual of style of writing, that is so acute and breathtaking. I love Karin Slaughter's books and will continue with "Indelible" and "Faithless".

Rating:
Summary: Lack of research
Review: I read all the reviews and not one mentioned a very glaring error. The terms "gauge," "skeet," "caliber," and "rifle" are not synonymous. Yet, Karin Slaughter uses them together, switches back and forth between them to a confusing degree. I don't pretend to be an expert in firearms, but I do know that sportsmen shoot skeet with a shotgun, not a rifle. And the ammunition for a shotgun is measured by gauge, not caliber. A rifle is an entirely different weapon using ammo measured in calibers. And her coroner and a police chief don't know the difference? Come on now. I'm closing the book forever on page 143 and deliver me from careless authors.

Rating:
Summary: Lack of research
Review: I read all the reviews and not one mentioned a very glaring error. The terms "gauge," "skeet," "caliber," and "rifle" are not synonymous. Yet, Karin Slaughter uses them together, switches back and forth between them to a confusing degree. I don't pretend to be an expert in firearms, but I do know that sportsmen shoot skeet with a shotgun, not a rifle. And the ammunition for a shotgun is measured by gauge, not caliber. A rifle is an entirely different weapon using ammo measured in calibers. And her coroner and a police chief don't know the difference? Come on now. I'm closing the book forever on page 143 and deliver me from careless authors.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Dreary, Not enough Plot
Review: Murder, Suicide, or Tedium

Writers who work in the grim reaper/suspense/mystery genre have to walk a difficult line. Too little violence and the reader fails to connect with the dark side of the plot. Too much violence, especially if it is gratuitous, and the reader starts skipping paragraphs looking for relief. After all gruesome killings are a plot device, not an end in itself.

All forensic fiction is based on a mild exaggeration of the medical examiner's role. Quincey aside, few of them ever take an active investigative role in an investigation. Either the writer has to create a twist to make this believable, or the book is good enough that the reader will overlook the obvious.

In Karin Slaughter's stories of Sara Linton the 'twist' seems to be that someone close to Sara is drawn into the circle of victims. Otherwise, the picture of a pediatric physician who doubles as medical examiner and has enough time to track down killers would ring false. This worked in previous volumes but this time, faced with the fact that the crime that became Sara's raison d'etre, was entirely gratuitous. Far from advancing the plot it became the basis for a sub-plot that I found to be distracting as it was all about Sara's relationships and very little about the story itself.

Most of this novel is subplots anyway. Possibly the one that irritated me the most centered on Lena Adams, now ousted from the police force and working as security at the local university. With suicide/murders popping out of the woodwork, Lena, who has, over three volumes, earned the honor of 'chief flake and angry person,' manages to screw up each and every investigation. Even worse, the ending makes it clear that she will go on to make even bigger messes, as her personality continues to worsen.

At some point in this book I gave up. The investigation was often fragmented by devices that should have moved the plot forward, but instead it stayed stuck at mid-point for most of the novel. In the end the solution is pulled out of a hat with little sense of closure.

To sum up, if you like really grim forensic descriptions of injuries, plots that are more about the distress of the main character than about the crimes at hand, and great handfuls of self-destructive psychotic behavior, you will probably really enjoy A Faint Cold Fear. Personally I'm a bit disappointed and am not sure I will follow this series into it's projected fourth and fifth volumes.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended--for those with strong stomachs
Review: Suicide is running rampant at the Grant Institute of Technology. But after three suspicious suicides in a row as well as a near-fatal stabbing, Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton has a score to settle.

If there's a multiple murderer stalking the college, she and her ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, will bring him or her to justice--even as the Linton Family struggles through its own crisis.

Add to this emotional mix the troubles of former detective Lena Adams, now a college security guard, who is sinking deeper into the myre of her own embattled psyche and acting out against Jeffrey, her former boss, whom she blames for her misfortunes.

In this third installment of the Grant County series, Slaughter has created a tense page-turner that at times portrays such raw emotions that it's uncomfortable to read. But the crimes are so
fascinating, so intricate, and the research so accurate that read it I did, with a vengeance. These characters are starting to feel like my own family. And when my nose wasn't in the book, I was talking about the characters as if they were real people.

As with the previous title, KISSCUT, this book is recommended for those with strong stomachs. Fans of Patricia Cornwell should enjoy it.

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.