a faint cold fear

a faint cold fear

grant county #3

karin slaughter

thriller/romance

william morrow

published 2003

Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus.  The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues - and the college authorities are keen to avoid a scandal - but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up.  Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked.  For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home and as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information.  But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the next victim....

Whoa Lena.  Just...whoa.

I've never really liked Lena as a character.  From the first book she was curt, rude, unforgiving and unhappy.  Then she was attacked and I felt horrible for her, but I still didn't like her.  In the second book she was spiraling down and again, I felt sorry for her, but I didn't like her.  Now, in the third Grant County book I just didn't understand her.

There's so much flip flopping in this books, things left unconnected and left hanging that at the end I would have felt bummed, but then with the last scene of Lena I was kind of floored.  At first I felt it came out of left field, but maybe not.

Everyone here still feels like a surface character.  We've not gone any deeper and so I think that's why I have a harder time connecting with anyone.  The murder mystery part is enough to keep me interested, but it was kind of all over the place and really, this was Lena's book.

For me this was a means to the end.  I want to continue reading the series so that means I must read each book along the way.  I could have taken this one or left it, but then ending....well, whoa.