general

Suicide is running rampant at the Grant Institute of Technology. But after three suspicious suicides in a row as well as a near-fatal stabbing, Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton has a score to settle.

If there's a multiple murderer stalking the college, she and her ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, will bring him or her to justice--even as the Linton Family struggles through its own crisis.

Add to this emotional mix the troubles of former detective Lena Adams, now a college security guard, who is sinking deeper into the myre of her own embattled psyche and acting out against Jeffrey, her former boss, whom she blames for her misfortunes.

In this third installment of the Grant County series, Slaughter has created a tense page-turner that at times portrays such raw emotions that it's uncomfortable to read. But the crimes are so
fascinating, so intricate, and the research so accurate that read it I did, with a vengeance. These characters are starting to feel like my own family. And when my nose wasn't in the book, I was talking about the characters as if they were real people.

As with the previous title, KISSCUT, this book is recommended for those with strong stomachs. Fans of Patricia Cornwell should enjoy it.

This is the 3rd book in Karin Slaughter's series about pediatrician and ME Sara Linton. It is the best of the 3, but still not a 5-star read. The characters are still a little bit annoying, and the plots are still a little bit too much like Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, but that said, I enjoyed A Faint Cold Fear, and found it well written and myself guessing nearly to the end.
Sara has to examine an apparent college-suicide, and everything is going well until her sister Tessa is stabbed and nearly killed. Tessa is pregnant, and her boyfriend is black. When Sara and her ex husband, Chief of Police Jefferey Tolliver, discovers that the suicide was Jewish, speculation starts. Was it really a suicide, or was it murder. Could it all be connected through some racist-thing, are there white supremacists on campus or is it all coincidental? Working sometimes against, sometimes with Sara and Jeffrey we find Lena Adams, one of Jefferey Tollivers former detectives, who are now licking her wounds after a brutal rape, working as a campus security guard. Lena Adams is brought into the investigation because it seems like she knows something is going on around campus.
It is not until the final pages we find out what really happened, and all the way to the end of this book you will find yourself entertained, but there is a risk you will find some of the characters, specially Lena Adams, a little "too much" sometimes.

I read all the reviews and not one mentioned a very glaring error. The terms "gauge," "skeet," "caliber," and "rifle" are not synonymous. Yet, Karin Slaughter uses them together, switches back and forth between them to a confusing degree. I don't pretend to be an expert in firearms, but I do know that sportsmen shoot skeet with a shotgun, not a rifle. And the ammunition for a shotgun is measured by gauge, not caliber. A rifle is an entirely different weapon using ammo measured in calibers. And her coroner and a police chief don't know the difference? Come on now. I'm closing the book forever on page 143 and deliver me from careless authors.