Karin Slaughter – Fractured

Abigail Campano has her life torn apart when she returns home one afternoon to find her home broken into, her daughter dead and a man with a knife heading towards her. Agent Will Trent and Detective Faith Mitchell are assigned to the case. They have to unravel the events and find a missing girl but time is not on their side.

I have had this book in my to read pile for some time and having never read any Karin Slaughter but having heard good things about her I decided it was time to give it a go. I generally prefer British crime fiction to American. I think because I have a better understanding of how the British police work so I do tend to push the American books aside in favour of the British ones a lot of the time. That said I do enjoy American crime fiction with Jeffery Deaver being among my favourite authors.

I think Fractured is the second book about Agent Will Trent. I have not read the first but that didn’t matter, the story worked well as a stand alone book in its own right. I think there were some references to the previous book but I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything by not having read it.

The story was good and the pace was just right throughout, keeping me wanting to read on. The characters were on the whole, well written, believable and likeable.

Although I enjoyed reading the book it wasn’t spectacular. I will be reading more Karin Slaughter in the future (especially if it is a follow on to Fractured as I am interested to read more about Will Trent and Faith Mitchell) but I won’t be rushing to do so immediately.

Tania Carver – The Creeper

Suzanne Perry has a stalker. He crept into her bedroom at night, she thought it was a nightmare until she found a photo of herself sleeping stuck to her bedroom window the next morning. There are other young women that have gone missing and a body has turned up on a boat. DI Phil Brennan is assigned to the case but he has problems of his own.

This was the first book that I have read by Tania Carver and I enjoyed it. The characters were well written and believable and the plot was good. The pacing was just right throughout as well.

The parts that I didn’t enjoy quite as much were the events surrounding DI Phil Brennan’s personal life. I think I would have enjoyed this more if I had read Tania Carver’s first novel, The Surrogate, as from what I can gather it was set up in that book so having not read it I was unaware of the reasons behind certain things. This was a minor thing though which didn’t take up much of the plot so didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the book.

I will definitely be looking out for future releases by Tania Carver and will read The Surrogate at some point as well.