Karin Slaughter and I have been in the book biz for about the same amount of time. Her first novel, Blindsighted, came out the first year I worked at Lemuria so I like to say I discovered her! I have read all of her novels and experienced some wild murders and miss the characters that she has killed off but I will say I really do like Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who has a past he would really like to keep quiet. We all know that one can never keep secrets for long. In Criminal, we are allowed to see just how Will became a GBI agent and while he was raised in the orphanage that he had people looking out for him all his life.
A female co-ed goes missing and Amanda Wagner, Will’s boss and mentor, purposely keeps him off the case and he doesn’t understand why. Amanda, on the other hand, sees a connection to the first case she worked on as a member of the Atlanta Police Department 40 years ago. She has her reasons and Will soon comes to realize them when Will, Sara and Amanda coincidentally end up at the abandoned boys home where Will grew up. Will was telling Sara some about his past but why was Amanda there?
Flashback 40 years, and Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are working a case that no one else seems to care if it is solved and as you read it becomes clear that these two cases are connected and that Will Trent is at the center of the mystery. I loved reading how these women came up in the justice system while Atlanta was a city in transition (the office politics are amazing) and many character back stories are filled in here in Criminal.
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