Hrmm.

by missmaudy

I’ve just finished reading “Unseen” by Karin Slaughter. Ms Slaughter writes two series of crime stories that are set in Georgia (either Atlanta or Grant County) that are sort of interrelated, in that characters from one appear in the other, and everyone seems to know someone else. I’ve read all fifteen of them and well. I’m not sure that I like them.

Yes, I’ve read fifteen books by the same author, and I’m really not sure that I like them at all. There’s just something about the books that I find a bit disturbing. I came across Karin Slaughter in a news group I used to frequent in Ye Olden Dayes of Teh Interwebs (when having a 2GB hard drive on my computer and 20 hours of internet a month was crikey who could ever need all that fancy stuff. A long time ago, hey.) And by came across her, I meant I am pretty sure she was an active participant in the group – or she’d been in the group and had just had her first novel accepted. I could be misremembering,  it was a really long time ago, anyway. And my main memory of that group was an obsession with the word “sluice”.

So, someone I sort of knew wrote a book, so being a good little soldier, I bought it and read it. It wasn’t bad for a first crime novel but there was something a little disquieting about the characters, something a bit not off, but like they’re mildly unpleasant people and I felt mildly unclean after spending time with them. In need of a damn good sluicing to be honest.

“Unseen” is no exception to the vaguely unpleasant feelings I get after reading Ms Slaughter’s books. It’s a Will Trent novel and centres around Will working undercover in a hospital in search of a drug kingpin. Will Trent is a detective with a colourful past – he’d been in care, had a few issues. He’s in love with Sara Linton (who is one of the main characters from the Grant County series – she moved to Atlanta after her husband was killed). The plot line in this one is a bit convoluted (but it’s reasonably obvious who the Big Bad is going to be right from the start), and there’s a heap of stuff that doesn’t really make sense even at the end. There’s one really good bit right toward the end – maybe that’s why I keep reading them? I remember the three or four pages of extraordinary writing and pick up the next one, forgetting how generally nasty the books are.

Not sure what I’m going to read next – The ereader is flat as a tack, plus I need to upload some more stuff. I don’t feel like swords and sorcery, and I don’t have too much crime n death in the pile. Might have to pick on something completely different.

(And whadderyou know, four blog posts in two days – compared to nowt for a month! And it also appears bed before midnight is totally on the agenda for this evening.)