Karin Slaughter
Author of Pretty Girls: A Novel
About the Author
Karin Slaughter was born in Georgia on January 6, 1971. In 2001, she published her first novel, Blindsighted, which made the Dagger Award shortlist for Best Thriller Debut. She is the author of the Grant County series and the Will Trent series. Her stand-alone novels include Cop Town, Pretty Girls, show more and Pieces of Her. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Karin Slaughter
Three Twisted Stories: Go Deep, Necessary Women, and Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line (2015) 35 copies, 3 reviews
Meet the Queen of Suspense, Karin Slaughter {promotional booklet with interview and short stories} (2005) 11 copies, 2 reviews
Karin Slaughter 6 Book Collection 8 copies
Will Trent: Books 5-7: A Karin Slaughter Thriller Collection Featuring Fallen, Criminal, and Unseen 7 copies, 4 reviews
Grant County Series 5 Books Collection Set By Karin Slaughter (Faint Cold Fear, Kisscut, Indelible, Faithless, Blindsighted) (2022) 3 copies
Qui siamo tutti colpevoli 2 copies
The Night Before She Died 1 copy
Tripych 1 copy
L'oro del baratro 1 copy
Non fidarti di lui 1 copy
Capelli biondi occhi azzurri 1 copy
Ninguém Pode Saber 1 copy
Viimeinen leski 1 copy
Siksi valehtelimme 1 copy
Will Trent Broke 1 copy
Триптих 1 copy
La mia vendetta 1 copy
Matchup 1 copy
DREH DICH NICHT UM 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Slaughter, Karin
- Other names
- Slotere, Karīna
- Birthdate
- 1971-01-06
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- crime novelist
- Agent
- Victoria Sanders (Victoria Sanders and Associates)
- Short biography
- Karin Slaughter (born January 6, 1971) is an American crime writer. The author of eighteen novels, Slaughter has sold more than 35 million copies of her books, which have been published in 37 languages and have debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom, Germany, and The Netherlands. Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001. She is also the 2015 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger winner for novel Cop Town. Her novel, Pieces of Her, was published in 2018. The novel will be adapted into a television series of the same name and it will be released on Netflix.
Slaughter is a library advocate and founded Save the Libraries, a non-profit organization that campaigns to support US public libraries. The Save the Libraries fund has provided over $300,000 to the DeKalb County Public Library in Atlanta, Georgia.
Characters from Slaughter's two main series, Grant County and Will Trent (Atlanta), were brought together in her novels Undone (2009), titled Genesis internationally, and Broken (2010). In these novels, Will Trent and Sara Linton work cases set in Atlanta and Grant County, respectively. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Georgia, USA
- Places of residence
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Georgia, USA
Members
Discussions
80s-90s YA series romance, snobby girl, blue collar guy, jobs in pizzeria in Name that Book (May 2013)
Reviews
Favorite Quotes:
Money. That was the real obstacle... She would never forget the look on Jeffrey’s face the first time he’d seen the balance in her trading account. Sara had actually heard the squeaking groan of his testicles retracting into his body. It had taken a hell of a lot of suction to get them back out again.
Sara had explained the science behind these mood changes. During the stages of pregnancy and breastfeeding and childhood, a woman’s brain was flooded with hormones that show more altered the gray matter in the regions involved in social processes, heightening the mother’s empathy and bonding them closely to their child. Which was a damn good thing, because if another human being treated you the way a toddler did—threw food in your face, questioned your every move, unraveled all of the aluminum foil off the roll, yelled at the silverware, made you clean shit off their ass, peed in your bed, peed in your car, peed on you while you were cleaning up their pee, demanded that you repeat everything at least sixteen times and then screeched at you for talking too much—then you would probably kill them.
Tinder was a no-go. The guys who didn’t look married looked like they should be chained to a bench outside of a courtroom. She’d tried Match.com but not one of the losers that she was even remotely attracted to could pass a background check. Which said more about the type of men Faith was attracted to than internet dating sites.
Her parenting skills fell somewhere between Charlotte’s Web and Lord of the Flies. Jeremy still teased her about the note she’d once left in his lunch box: The bread is stale. This is what happens when you don’t close the bag.
Don’t mess with the US Government. They won two wars and can print their own money.
Dash was a stupid man’s idea of how a smart man sounded.
My Review:
This book was gripping and all-consuming yet it took me twice as long to read, as I had to put it down, take deep breaths, and walk away from it now and then. Not because it was bad, but because it was diabolically brilliant and absorbing, I was sucked right into this complex and fiendish vortex and helplessly engrossed in the chaos. The plot was complex and skillfully crafted while the writing was ingeniously textured and scorched my brain matter while it squeezed my heart and lungs.
This contemptible and monstrous scenario could very well happen, which was intensely disturbing to me as it was heinously realistic. The ever-escalating and highly disturbing climate of arrogance, hate, manipulation, and perversion of information being generated from our current national embarrassments at the top does seem to be empowering the most twisted of the vile and disenfranchised. Karin Slaughter is devilishly clever and a masterful wordsmith. She scared me silly. show less
Money. That was the real obstacle... She would never forget the look on Jeffrey’s face the first time he’d seen the balance in her trading account. Sara had actually heard the squeaking groan of his testicles retracting into his body. It had taken a hell of a lot of suction to get them back out again.
Sara had explained the science behind these mood changes. During the stages of pregnancy and breastfeeding and childhood, a woman’s brain was flooded with hormones that show more altered the gray matter in the regions involved in social processes, heightening the mother’s empathy and bonding them closely to their child. Which was a damn good thing, because if another human being treated you the way a toddler did—threw food in your face, questioned your every move, unraveled all of the aluminum foil off the roll, yelled at the silverware, made you clean shit off their ass, peed in your bed, peed in your car, peed on you while you were cleaning up their pee, demanded that you repeat everything at least sixteen times and then screeched at you for talking too much—then you would probably kill them.
Tinder was a no-go. The guys who didn’t look married looked like they should be chained to a bench outside of a courtroom. She’d tried Match.com but not one of the losers that she was even remotely attracted to could pass a background check. Which said more about the type of men Faith was attracted to than internet dating sites.
Her parenting skills fell somewhere between Charlotte’s Web and Lord of the Flies. Jeremy still teased her about the note she’d once left in his lunch box: The bread is stale. This is what happens when you don’t close the bag.
Don’t mess with the US Government. They won two wars and can print their own money.
Dash was a stupid man’s idea of how a smart man sounded.
My Review:
This book was gripping and all-consuming yet it took me twice as long to read, as I had to put it down, take deep breaths, and walk away from it now and then. Not because it was bad, but because it was diabolically brilliant and absorbing, I was sucked right into this complex and fiendish vortex and helplessly engrossed in the chaos. The plot was complex and skillfully crafted while the writing was ingeniously textured and scorched my brain matter while it squeezed my heart and lungs.
This contemptible and monstrous scenario could very well happen, which was intensely disturbing to me as it was heinously realistic. The ever-escalating and highly disturbing climate of arrogance, hate, manipulation, and perversion of information being generated from our current national embarrassments at the top does seem to be empowering the most twisted of the vile and disenfranchised. Karin Slaughter is devilishly clever and a masterful wordsmith. She scared me silly. show less
After close to two decades of estrangement, sisters Claire Scott and Lydia Delgado are brought together following the brutal murder of Claire’s husband, Paul. Their family had been shaken to the core years earlier when the oldest sister, Julia, disappeared from her college dorm. Worry and unanswered questions hang over the family like a dark rain cloud and each has been touched by the fallout.
When Claire makes an unsettling discovery about her husband, she ultimately calls into question show more everything she ever thought she knew about her sisters, her father’s suicide, her husband, and herself. As she digs deeper into Paul’s life, she discovers that nothing is as she believed it to be, and nothing will ever be the same again.
As characters, both sisters are flawed. Claire is particularly unlikable; she has abdicated from any hint of responsibility and simply allowed her husband to take charge of things. Despite her own infidelity, she embraces a holier-than-thou attitude which, when coupled with constant reminders of her beauty, does little to endear her to readers. Younger sister, Lydia, has, through hard work and grit, redeemed her life from its earlier dependence on drugs, but she is filled with resentment and anger. The third narrator, the girls’ father, Sam, died several years earlier, apparently a suicide, and speaks only through letters he had written to his oldest daughter after she disappeared.
The story is at its best when it is focused on the family, on the reactions and the coping mechanisms each member embraces following the disappearance of the oldest daughter. The writing is first-rate; rich detail and depth abound. The tension builds, the story unfolds in ever-increasing urgency and angst. The father’s letters to his missing daughter bring to the narrative a poignancy that borders on heartrending.
And yet, there is an overabundance of escalating graphic depravity spilling across page after page. Focused on all manner of evil perpetrated against women, it is difficult to read, sickening to the spirit, and detestable to the soul.
Yes, suspense thrillers are often about unspeakable acts and the malevolence of those who commit them. But the books that resound with readers tend to balance the “good” and the “evil” in such a way that, in the end, the reader finds that justice has been served and that satisfaction in some way mitigates the violence.
By blurring those lines, “Pretty Girls” tumbles into a disturbing, dark degeneracy. When Sam tells Claudia, “There are some things you can’t unsee,” he might well be warning readers that there are also some things you can’t unread. And, with its surfeit of harrowing horror, many readers are likely to wish they could unread this one. show less
When Claire makes an unsettling discovery about her husband, she ultimately calls into question show more everything she ever thought she knew about her sisters, her father’s suicide, her husband, and herself. As she digs deeper into Paul’s life, she discovers that nothing is as she believed it to be, and nothing will ever be the same again.
As characters, both sisters are flawed. Claire is particularly unlikable; she has abdicated from any hint of responsibility and simply allowed her husband to take charge of things. Despite her own infidelity, she embraces a holier-than-thou attitude which, when coupled with constant reminders of her beauty, does little to endear her to readers. Younger sister, Lydia, has, through hard work and grit, redeemed her life from its earlier dependence on drugs, but she is filled with resentment and anger. The third narrator, the girls’ father, Sam, died several years earlier, apparently a suicide, and speaks only through letters he had written to his oldest daughter after she disappeared.
The story is at its best when it is focused on the family, on the reactions and the coping mechanisms each member embraces following the disappearance of the oldest daughter. The writing is first-rate; rich detail and depth abound. The tension builds, the story unfolds in ever-increasing urgency and angst. The father’s letters to his missing daughter bring to the narrative a poignancy that borders on heartrending.
And yet, there is an overabundance of escalating graphic depravity spilling across page after page. Focused on all manner of evil perpetrated against women, it is difficult to read, sickening to the spirit, and detestable to the soul.
Yes, suspense thrillers are often about unspeakable acts and the malevolence of those who commit them. But the books that resound with readers tend to balance the “good” and the “evil” in such a way that, in the end, the reader finds that justice has been served and that satisfaction in some way mitigates the violence.
By blurring those lines, “Pretty Girls” tumbles into a disturbing, dark degeneracy. When Sam tells Claudia, “There are some things you can’t unsee,” he might well be warning readers that there are also some things you can’t unread. And, with its surfeit of harrowing horror, many readers are likely to wish they could unread this one. show less
This story, part of the Will Trent/Sara Linton series, begins in 1974 Atlanta, and alternates between that time period and the present. In 1974 we meet young Amanda Wagner, as well as young Evelyn Mitchell, Faith's mother and the focus of the last book of the series, Fallen. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, Will Trent, is ordered not to investigate the disappearance of a female college student, which only tends to pique his curiosity more. He learns that his immediate supervisor, show more Amanda Wagner, has been withholding information from him. His father, a convicted killer, was released from prison two months ago. Will has only seen pictures of his father, his trial taking place when Will was only a child. But as disturbed as he is knowing his father is out of prison, he's more alarmed by the apparent similarities between the missing students and the women his father killed.
I loved this book and it was one of my favorites. That being said, I don't recommend anyone read it who is not already familiar with these characters. The very in-depth back story of Amanda and Evelyn is probably of more interest to long time fans who already know Amanda. The author has devoted a great deal of time to filling in the blank spots of the main character. I was also filled with nothing but sympathy for the pioneering women of the 1970s who tried to break into jobs formerly held only by men. As a woman of the same generation who did something similar, I almost wept remembering some of that treatment.
I've recently been rereading the Will Trent/Sara Linton series in audio and think the books keep getting better and better. I had to laugh at some of the incidents in this book, especially during the 1974 parts. There is a lot of violence in this book, especially toward the women who are killed, but I think the author does a great job of making you sympathetic to the main characters. She knows how to construct a good crime story filled with characters who are flawed and damaged, as well as evil. I'm looking forward to the next book of the series, Unseen. show less
I loved this book and it was one of my favorites. That being said, I don't recommend anyone read it who is not already familiar with these characters. The very in-depth back story of Amanda and Evelyn is probably of more interest to long time fans who already know Amanda. The author has devoted a great deal of time to filling in the blank spots of the main character. I was also filled with nothing but sympathy for the pioneering women of the 1970s who tried to break into jobs formerly held only by men. As a woman of the same generation who did something similar, I almost wept remembering some of that treatment.
I've recently been rereading the Will Trent/Sara Linton series in audio and think the books keep getting better and better. I had to laugh at some of the incidents in this book, especially during the 1974 parts. There is a lot of violence in this book, especially toward the women who are killed, but I think the author does a great job of making you sympathetic to the main characters. She knows how to construct a good crime story filled with characters who are flawed and damaged, as well as evil. I'm looking forward to the next book of the series, Unseen. show less
Long-time Karin Slaughter fans will gobble up The Silent Wife. The thriller continues Slaughter’s melding of two separate series: the Grant County books with medical examiner Sara Linton, and the Will Trent series with—you guessed it—GBI sleuth Will Trent.
My first exposure to Slaughter was through an author interview. Her comments about trying to break into the crime thriller genre in the 1990s struck a chord. As progressive as I thought those decades were, evidently publishers still show more considered a woman author candidly writing about mutilation, rape, and murder “in poor taste,” despite the successes of her best-selling male cohorts.
Slaughter ignored those stale paradigms with her breakout 2001 novel, Blindsighted. Blown away by both her groundbreaking detail of a heinous murder, and by the quality of her first published novel, I immediately followed the read with her newest effort, The Silent Wife.
Slaughter did not disappoint. Years after the events in Blindsighted, medical examiner Sara Linton teams with Slaughter’s newest protagonist, Will Trent, to investigate a prison riot and subsequent murder. An inmate who has always claimed innocence offers information on both events if Linton and Trent reopen his own murder case. He claims Sara’s dead ex-husband, police chief Will Tolliver, screwed him over years before, sending him to prison while the actual murderer continued murdering young girls.
Slaughter pivots the story between the original murder cases and the present-day investigation, the protagonists searching for a pattern that will identify the killer who remains on the loose.
I’ve only read two Karin Slaughter novels and argue that’s an advantage over long-term Slaughter fans.
First, this book can stand alone outside of the series. Karin Slaughter has written 20 bestsellers that include one or both of our protagonists. I sped through this book and did not once feel that the story was confusing because I’d never read a Will Trent book before. Don’t feel you need to start from the beginning.
Second, I suspect avid Slaughter fans take her storytelling skills for granted. I don’t. She’s got a special talent for character, plot, and gore. Her protagonists leap off the page, pursuing justice while struggling through deep flaws in themselves and their relationship with each other.
“With Will, Sara was keenly aware that she was the only woman on earth who could love him the way that he deserved to be loved.”
The plot is fast-paced, and no suspect gets a pass until the reader rolls into the nail-biting conclusion. The gore is not gratuitous. Slaughter’s depictions of extreme violence show detailed research and she presents the scenes to the reader in a dispassionate, almost medical, manner. I’m not a gore fan, but Slaughter does it right.
Readers looking for similar authors/titles providing the medical/crime thriller vibe that Slaughter has mastered should check out Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles series. You decide—start with her 2001 bestseller, The Surgeon, or the latest release, 2017’s The Bone Garden.
I’ll rate The Silent Wife a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The acid test? I generally read two to three books at once, but when I stumble on a page-turner, the other books go to the back burner. I read The Silent Wife straight through. show less
My first exposure to Slaughter was through an author interview. Her comments about trying to break into the crime thriller genre in the 1990s struck a chord. As progressive as I thought those decades were, evidently publishers still show more considered a woman author candidly writing about mutilation, rape, and murder “in poor taste,” despite the successes of her best-selling male cohorts.
Slaughter ignored those stale paradigms with her breakout 2001 novel, Blindsighted. Blown away by both her groundbreaking detail of a heinous murder, and by the quality of her first published novel, I immediately followed the read with her newest effort, The Silent Wife.
Slaughter did not disappoint. Years after the events in Blindsighted, medical examiner Sara Linton teams with Slaughter’s newest protagonist, Will Trent, to investigate a prison riot and subsequent murder. An inmate who has always claimed innocence offers information on both events if Linton and Trent reopen his own murder case. He claims Sara’s dead ex-husband, police chief Will Tolliver, screwed him over years before, sending him to prison while the actual murderer continued murdering young girls.
Slaughter pivots the story between the original murder cases and the present-day investigation, the protagonists searching for a pattern that will identify the killer who remains on the loose.
I’ve only read two Karin Slaughter novels and argue that’s an advantage over long-term Slaughter fans.
First, this book can stand alone outside of the series. Karin Slaughter has written 20 bestsellers that include one or both of our protagonists. I sped through this book and did not once feel that the story was confusing because I’d never read a Will Trent book before. Don’t feel you need to start from the beginning.
Second, I suspect avid Slaughter fans take her storytelling skills for granted. I don’t. She’s got a special talent for character, plot, and gore. Her protagonists leap off the page, pursuing justice while struggling through deep flaws in themselves and their relationship with each other.
“With Will, Sara was keenly aware that she was the only woman on earth who could love him the way that he deserved to be loved.”
The plot is fast-paced, and no suspect gets a pass until the reader rolls into the nail-biting conclusion. The gore is not gratuitous. Slaughter’s depictions of extreme violence show detailed research and she presents the scenes to the reader in a dispassionate, almost medical, manner. I’m not a gore fan, but Slaughter does it right.
Readers looking for similar authors/titles providing the medical/crime thriller vibe that Slaughter has mastered should check out Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles series. You decide—start with her 2001 bestseller, The Surgeon, or the latest release, 2017’s The Bone Garden.
I’ll rate The Silent Wife a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The acid test? I generally read two to three books at once, but when I stumble on a page-turner, the other books go to the back burner. I read The Silent Wife straight through. show less
Lists
READ in 2023 (12)
FAB 2023 (1)
Guilty Pleasures (1)
To Read (1)
Secret Histories (1)
FAB 2021 (1)
READ 2026 (1)
READ in 2024 (12)
READ 2025 (5)
StoryTel 2024 (5)
Everand 2023 (5)
READ IN 2022 (3)
READ IN 2021 (3)
READ IN 2020 (2)
StoryTel 2023 (2)
FAB 2025 (2)
FAB 2024 (2)
FAB 2022 (1)
FAB 2020 (1)
Female Author (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 104
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 59,690
- Popularity
- #243
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 2,112
- ISBNs
- 1,932
- Languages
- 29
- Favorited
- 146
