A Review of "Kisscut" [39]

Kisscut by Karin Slaughter
William Morrow, ISBN 978-0688174590
September 3, 2002, 352 pages

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It starts as just a nice Saturday night. 
Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver wants to spend the evening with his ex-wife Sara Linton, who he has started dating again, at the skating rink. Then he steps outside to take a phone call and into the midst of a nightmare.
A young girl is holding a gun on a teenage boy, things escalate and Jeffrey is forced to shoot her to save the boy's life. It is a terrible thing, the thing of nightmares, but as the police start to investigate why she would have done this, things just get worse, worse than they ever could have thought at first. Starting with the dead, dismembered newborn that Sara, a pediatrician and the county coroner, finds in the skating rink's restroom.
The first thought, that the girl had given birth to the child and went to kill the boy, the father, proves not to be possible...for reasons that I will let you read yourself. 

This is the second book in Slaughter's Grant Count series and all our favorite characters from the first book are back. Besides Tolliver and Linton, front and center, a witness to the shooting and leading in the investigation, is Detective Lena Adams, herself the victim of a horrible crime in the previous book Blindsighted. If you have not read the previous book and are not aware of what happen to her, don't worry, because she is far from over it and we will soon share most of the details again.

I will warn you the subject matter of this book is strong stuff. Some reader will like that but some may not, but if you do, no one does this sort of story better than Slaughter. Personally, I though it was a very good plot, fast paced, one that had a number of revelations that took me by surprise...and OK, one that totally did not.  But I will forgive that, because the action is non-stop from the first page.

The characters are always interesting, if not always totally likable. Which points out one problem I have with this series. The center character of these books is suppose to be Sara, doctor extraordinaire and love interest of Chief Tolliver. On the other hand Lena, deeply flawed, walking on the edge, occasionally out of control Lena, is her foil. But the problem is, I don't like Sara and keep hoping the Chief wise up and drop her (although I know he will not). On the other hand, I think Lena is, by far, a better character, far more interesting and even more likable. Sara dislikes Lena and makes no secret of it, but I assume we are suppose to understand why. I just think Sara is often a nasty piece of work. This is one scene in this book where Sara, in her normal self righteous, know it all mode, says something to Lena that is incredibly mean and hurtful. But Sara is sorry, because as she tells herself, she is not a mean person, so I guess it is suppose to be OK. Really?

Well, a mix of good and bad folks makes for an interesting story and Kisscut is indeed that!

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