Best-selling novelist Slaughter is most well known for her Grant County series, but here she follows up on the characters introduced in Triptych (2006). Will Trent, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, needs a GPS system to find his way to the crime scene in Ansley Park, one of Atlanta's oldest and wealthiest suburbs. Once on the scene, however, he is the only one to intuit the true specifics of the case, much to the irritation of the Atlanta PD. Suburban mom Emily Campano, returning home early, finds the severely beaten body of her teenage daughter, Emma, and instinctively attacks the seeming perpetrator, strangling him. Will soon discovers, however, that the dead teen is not Emma but her best friend. He is charged with heading up the investigation into Emma's kidnapping and saddled with a partner from the Atlanta PD, an officer who has her own reasons for hating him. Possible motives and suspects abound as they home in on the girl's posh private high school, a veritable cauldron that mixes cruel social climbing with sexual manipulation, among both the faculty and their pupils. As Will makes headway on the case, he must also struggle to compensate for his severe dyslexia, smooth the tensions with his new partner, and hide the emotional scars of a childhood spent in an orphanage. Slaughter brings breakneck pacing and emotional intensity to what could well be a series compelling enough to rival her Grant County novels. In addition, she ups the ante by starkly revealing the great emotional divide that separates those who have experienced severe trauma from those untouched by tragedy.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2008 Booklist

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent (Triptych, 2006) tracks the monster--more likely, the pair of monsters--who raped and killed one teenage girl and abducted another. Slaughter (Beyond Reach, 2007, etc.) kicks off with one of her trademark instant-trauma scenes: Abigail Campano, fresh from confronting her husband Paul over his latest fling, walks into her house to find her daughter Emma dead, a man with a knife bending over her. Summoning impossible reserves of strength and courage, Abigail strikes back at the intruder only to find that she's completely, catastrophically misread the scene. Emma has been kidnapped, not killed, and the clock is ticking down toward the moment when it's too late to help her. The ill-assorted crime-fighters working the case include Amanda Wagner of the GBI; Will Trent, the dyslexic agent who's constantly frustrated by her secrecy and manipulation; and Det. Faith Mitchell of the Atlanta State Police, who's furious with Will for pushing her mother off the force and rightly suspicious that he's holding out on her as well. Whether Slaughter is focusing on the investigators, the bereaved parents or the suspects, the intensity is nonstop. The trail leads to a pair of nasty perps Slaughter has barely paid attention to before and a messy, improbable reconstruction of the crime. But fans swept up in the story's relentless drive won't even notice these problems till they've turned the last page with a deep sigh of relief. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The best-selling author of Triptych offers another compelling crime novel, bringing back familiar characters and using again the setting of Atlanta. Finding her daughter murdered in her upscale home, Abigail Campano kills her daughter's assailant in revenge. But is the situation that simple? Slaughter takes readers on a roller-coaster ride of suspense, mixing a slew of shady suspects with a detective with some secrets of his own that may--or may not--be pertinent to the case. She steers us from the grungy streets of Atlanta to the campus of Georgia Tech and into the politics of law enforcement, with the great details on the cityscape of Atlanta certain to impress fans familiar with the city. This is an excellent exploration of the universal hopes, fears, and dangers that swirl in the microcosm of a city. For popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/08.]--Colleen S. Harris, Univ. of Tennessee at Chattanooga Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

At the start of bestseller Slaughter's heart-pounding sequel to 2006's Triptych, wealthy housewife Abigail Campano returns home one day to Atlanta's posh Ansley Park neighborhood to find a dead girl in the mansion's upstairs hallway, the apparent killer nearby. Thinking that the girl is her teenage daughter, Emma, the distraught Abby kills the alleged attacker only to realize that the murdered girl is not Emma, but Emma's friend, Kayla Alexander. Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation soon determines that he has a murder and kidnapping on his hands. Paired with Det. Faith Mitchell, Trent scrambles to put the pieces together and find Emma before it's too late. Slaughter brings the same raw energy and brutal violence that distinguishes her Grant County series (Beyond Reach, etc.) to this new series with chilling results, while Trent and Mitchell, a pair of complex and deeply flawed heroes, will leave fans clamoring for the next installment. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved