Blindsighted

Rating:
Summary: Gory, but good
Review: For her debut novel, Karin Slaughter has produced an excellent mystery, featuring an interesting story, good suspense, and gore galore. The two main characters are both interesting: a female pediatrician (who also serves as the town's coroner) and her ex-husband, the Chief of Police. (Less interesting is a thirld character, a police detective, who features prominently in parts of the story.)

The case is a tough one: someone in their small Georgia town is committing a series of horrible assaults on women. At times the story is more graphic than is good for the digestion, but it is effective. Slaughter is definitely off to a fast start. I think fans (and ex-fans) of Patricia Cornwell will like this one.

Reviewed by David Montgomery, Mystery Ink

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre & often annoying
Review: After all the advance hype, I expected this book to be much better than it is. The three main characters are irritating and hard to like. The author apparently couldn't decide whether to make them warmly sympathetic or coldly off-putting and ended up trying to give both qualities to all three, with the result that their behavior is sometimes jarringly inconsistent. The writing is pedestrian and often clumsy. (Example: Slaughter uses the word "mumbled" so many times -- often more than once on a single page -- that it became funny after a while, and the image of all these people walking around mumbling constantly was very distracting.) Long stretches of the book are flat and boring. All in all, a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Unexpected Treat
Review: What initially attracted me to "Blindsighted" was the violence of its beginning. Even in a genre noted for the horrific, this tale wastes no time in firing with both barrels as Sara Linton, coroner of a sleepy, conservative Southern town enters a diner's restroom to discover the aftermath of a bloody and brutal attack on a local college professor. The woman dies in Sara's arms, and the subsequent autopsy reveals a crime almost baroque in its complex horror.

Sara's role forces her to deal with her ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. This unwilling partnership must confront its own issues while trying to deal with a second murder, even more gruesome than the first. Also part of the hunt is Detective Lena Adams, sister of the first victim. Torn by her own grief and a sense of powerlessness, the crimes seem to eat away at her, stretching her ability to retain control of her personal and professional life. The three find that they are dealing with a deranged serial killer that not only tortures and molests his victims, but then leaves them to be found at the edge of death. For Sara the deaths seem to be an impossible message from the past.

Each of the players, including the invisible killer, has some defect or injury which makes them vulnerable. As the lens shifts back and forth from Sara to Jeffrey, then to Lena, then back again, it is the fine detail of their personalities as much as the complex forensic work that first hides and then finally reveals the roots of the killer's motivation. Much of what makes "Blindsighted" work is the adeptness with which Karin Slaughter combines a complex and fast paced plot with unusually well developed main characters. Sara Linton, Jeffrey Tolliver, and Lena Tolliver are all given loving attention. If you think this means that some of the minor characters are too sketchy, you will be much surprised.

Wherever you look, this is a detail rich story. It lives up to it's billing as a Southern mystery story, not simply by hiding behind stereotypes, but in allowing the reader to experience the conflicts that lie under the surface of a rural South that is only steps away from it's urban counterpart. Nor are these factors peripheral to the tale. It is remarkable to encounter a first novel where the author as conscious of the part each fragment will play in the whole as is Karen Slaughter. While nothing is ever perfect, there is nothing here that is amateurish. This is something fresh and original for those who thought that the serial killer was past its peak.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Karen Slaughter has captured my interest with this first book of hers. I will be remember her name and am looking forward to another book by her. The story was so interesting that it had my attention throughout the book. Couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Over-hyped
Review: This book was not an unpleasant read but to review it like it's great literature or even a great Whodunit is ridiculous. The writing wasn't bad but every now and then it had a jarring note. The characters were not well drawn, the ending was horribly predictable and weak. The murderer was neither scary or believable, although I did like the outlines of the pediatrician/coroner. I don't think the book lives up to its marketing.

Rating:
Summary: No Middle Ground
Review: From reading the other reviews, it seems you either love this book or you hate it.

I loved it.

Yes, it's gory. There's one bit in the book that even squicks me, and I have a high threshold of squick.

In the end, however, what keeps me involved in a mystery and turning the pages are the characters. Does the author make you care about what happens to them? Even if you'd dislike the characters if you met them on the street, do their fates matter to you?

In "Blindsighted" the answer is yes. These are complex people, occasionally difficult people, but they each have an interesting tale to tell that makes their actions believable and engaging.

As for plot, the book moves fast and sweeps you up in its story. I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Murder by Numbers
Review: A very run-of-the-mill crime thriller. Slaughter tries hard to give it all to us -- strong forensics, a little medical action, a little tough interrogation, a little romance; the wounded and capable and pretty doctor, the wounded and capable and tough female detective, the wounded and capable and well-intentioned chief of police. These characters never felt real to me, they never gained any real depth. She gives a good deal of gore and gruesome detail, I'm just not sure if it really added to the story or if she was just doing her best Patricia Cornwell imitation (again, murder by numbers). Slaughter is brave in her plotting, I'll give her that. She reaches a point at which most authors would stop and keeps on going, subjecting even leading characters to unspeakable things. But the "bad guy" was way too obvious, his ultimate demise due to an altogether too convenient inability, and his reasons for being in town were just nonsense. Maybe his reasons would have worked for a stalker, but they just don't cut it for a serial killer. Finally, although the book started with action, that quickly ended and Slaughter spent a good long while setting up (100 pages more or less). Finally, there was a brief and exciting middle part, and then it all gave way to a very, very run-of-the-mill and predictable second half. The biggest mystery here is: why is this a trilogy?

Rating:
Summary: A little less gore, a lot more lore!
Review: I was looking forward to reading Blindsighted since I read a review in a magazine. I waited patiently, going to as many as four bookstores before I finally found someone who had a copy of it. I opened it up and read....and nearly put the book down. I have always been a fan of thrillers and suspense, but this was just not up to Patricia Cornwell standards. Certain scenes were violently overdone, and then some dialogue scenes were not carried out to there fullest. I liked the banter between the two main characters, but it could have been developed so much more. I enjoyed the main character, and will probably check out the next book from the libary just to see what she is up to, but I would not waste money on the hard cover of this book, unless you like a lot of violence and gore.

Rating:
Summary: Not that bad. Not that good. Mediocre.
Review: ....I also think that this book is not bad. It's not great, either. I would put it in the middle of the couple hundred mystery and thriller books I read. The writing is competent but kind of flat, like the writer was trying too hard to write a bestseller and did not really care what happened to the characters. Dialogue is wasted on stuff that doesn't matter a lot of the time so it just takes up space. A bunch of plot points are left hanging. The plot is not original and everything that happens in it has been done way too many times before. I am sick of serial killers and even sicker of reading about ones that are 1,000 times smarter than the real ones. The plot twists are pretty sad. But the worst thing about it is the way K. Slaughter goes into too much detail on the graphic violence parts with no warning or build-up. To compare her to Thomas Harris is untrue because Harris uses the suggestion of violence to create real terror. Slaughter dumps it on your head like a bucket of blood from "Carrie" and it is just like that. It is fake scary and sort of gross but too obviously intended to shock. (But like I said almost all the books out there right now are like that so it is not like she is any different.) The setting was good though and better than most books. I would've given it 3 stars to put it in the middle but because of the planted reviews I am giving it 2 to try and make the overall rating more accurate.

Rating:
Summary: SLAUGHTER'S SLAUGHTER
Review: As a mystery writer with my debut novel in its initial release, I am impressed by Karin Slaughter's debut Sara Linton novel. BLINDSIGHTED reads like a solid medical examiner thriller. Ms. Slaughter is confidently following in the footsteps of Patrica Cornwell. This novel has more than its share of gore and violence. It is not for the faint-hearted. If you like your crime fiction loaded with blood, death, rape, danger, and suspense, BLINDSIGHTED is for you.