Faith Mitchell gets to her mother’s house late to pick up her daughter Emma but there is blood on the door. So starts this novel in the Georgia series of crime thrillers from Karin Slaughter. It has been over 5 years since I have last read one of Karin’s novels and it feels like I have suddenly bumped into an old friend I had lost contact with. I have read a total of 5 novels from Karin and each one is a stand alone book, so you do not have to read them in a sequence. Karin is a very popular top selling American author and she bangs out a new novel each year. I like her writing style where she bombards the reader with tonnes of information that supports an intelligent and very involved plot. She is very good with forensics and Police procedure.
Karin is good at explaining popular culture in her novels so that the reader can step into the environment, for example…
‘He’s only got one tattoo.’ Young gang members generally used their bodies as a canvas to illustrate their lives, etching tattoos of teardrops under their eyes for every murder, wrapping their elbows and shoulders in cobwebs to show they’d done time. The tattoos were always rendered in blue ink culled from ballpoint pens, what was called ‘joint ink,’ and they always told a story. Unless their story was so bad that it didn’t need to be told.
...Karin also has a powerful knack to describe feelings to the reader so very well. We all enjoy everyday freedoms and can take them for granted, however…
If they were lucky, this diagnosing and classification process took around six weeks before they were assigned to another prison or moved to the permanent facilities at D&C. Until then, the inmates were on twenty-three-hour lockdown, which meant that but for one hour a day, they were confined to their cells. No cigarettes, coffee, or soda were allowed. They could buy only one newspaper a week. No books were allowed, not even the Bible. There were no TVs. No radios. No phones. There was a yard, but inmates were allowed out only three days a week, and that was weather permitting and only for whatever time was left on their one hour day. Only long-term residents were allowed visitors, and then it was in a room that was halved by a metal mesh that required you to yell to be heard over the voices of the other visitors. No touching. No hugging. No contact whatsoever.
...I enjoyed reading Fallen, it was a very entertaining and thrilling read. It is a great story to run with as a daily read. It is easy to follow and picking it up is like getting the day’s gossip from workmates. Karin is in the top league of authors for crime thrillers and this book is a comfortable read that does not disappoint. I can find nothing wrong with this novel, so I will vote it the top score of 5 stars and look forward to reading her next novel called criminal in the Georgia series.
Fallen has 463 pages and was written in 2011.
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