The Kept Woman

July 25, 2016
Dale Harding, the murder victim at the center of bestseller Slaughter’s exciting if flawed sixth novel starring Will Trent and Dr. Sara Linton (after 2013’s Unseen), was a retired (and dirty) Atlanta cop. Harding’s body turns up in a nightclub belonging to a celebrity athlete who recently beat a rape charge in a case handled by Will, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent. A gun at the crime scene ties the whole mess to Angie Polaski, Will’s dangerously off-kilter wife, who frequently leaves him for long periods but always returns. Further complications follow after Sara, Will’s current girlfriend, who’s now a GBI medical examiner, tells him that Harding wasn’t the only one who suffered—and bled a lot—in the club. The case becomes almost too large for Slaughter to contain, which could explain her choice to rely on an awkward extended flashback sequence, but she mostly manages to wrangle this installment into an intense look at the nature of loss and control, and how love can taint both. Five-city author tour. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Associates.

April 1, 2016

Just how bad is it when Will Trent finds a body on the floor of an abandoned Atlanta warehouse? Pretty bad. Bloody footprints suggest that another victim was carried away, and the warehouse belongs to a local-hero athlete already being investigated for rape. What's more, Will's ex-wife is married to the slick, successful guy. Then the crime scene yields an unfortunate link to Will's stormy past. Slaughter returns to her popular series after the blockbuster success of the stand-alone Pretty Girls. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2016
After two exceptional stand-alones, Slaughter returns to her best-selling series featuring Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) agent Will Trent. After a retired Atlanta cop is murdered at a construction site owned by pro basketball player Marcus Rippy, whom Trent tried unsuccessfully to convict of rape, the GBI finds a gun at the scene registered to Angie Polaski, along with a lot of blood of her B-negative type. Ex-cop Angie is Trent's toxic ex-wife, a part of his life for 30 years since they were both abused kids, but mostly a source of pain for him now that he's been with Medical Examiner Sara Linton for two years. Still, he has to know whether Angie is dead or alive. Despite Trent's emotional involvement, he and partner Faith Mitchell start looking for answers and soon find more bodies. The investigation takes them first to the sports-management firm that handled Rippy and then beyond, revealing, in the process, secrets about Angie's past. Graphic violence, expected from Slaughter, dots the pages of this compelling novel, along with suspense that continually ratchets upward, a revealing look at domestic violence in all levels of society, and the continued development of a tight-knit cast of characters. This is prime Slaughter, must-read fare for thriller fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Slaughter is a permanent fixture on thrillerdom's A-list, and a new Will Trent novel after a three-year absence will only heighten the interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)