When medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver take a trip away from the small town of Heartsdale - an escape from all the pressures which complicate their relationship - it should be a straightforward weekend at the beach. But they decide to take a detour via Jeffrey's hometown and things go violently wrong when Jeffrey's best friend Robert shoots dead an intruder who breaks into his house. Jeffrey and Sara are first on the scene and Jeffrey's keen to clear his friend's name, but for Sara things aren't so simple. The sear marks around the bullet-hole don't tally with Robert's story. Robert's wife, Jessie, is incoherent and confused. And when Jeffrey appears to change the crime scene, Sara no longer knows who to trust. Twelve years later, Sara and Jeffrey are caught up in a shockingly brutal attack which threatens to destroy both their lives. But they're not random victims. They've been targeted. And it seems the past is catching up with both of them...
Knowing that there are more books in this series with Jeffrey in them, you know that no matter what happens to him in this book, he’ll survive. I appreciate knowing this because I hate it when characters I like die. Even when I know that a character will eventually live or who will end up with whom, I enjoy the story that gets there. Karin Slaughter did not disappoint me with this book. There are really two separate plot lines here, but they are linked together, even though you are not really quite sure how right away.
One plot line involves what happens at the police station (obviously). This is not really the main focus of the book – at least, it did not capture my interest the way the other plot line did. We get to see Lena again, this time as she returns to her job as a police detective. Her role in this book is not quite as prominent as it has been for the first three books, but it was still important. And she pulled through in the end without messing up too badly. At least professionally.
The second plot line took place in the past when Jeffrey and Sara were first dating. Jeffrey takes Sara to his hometown “as a detour” on their beach trip, and the detour turns into the vacation from hell. We had already kind of met some of the characters from Jeffrey’s past earlier in the series, but here we got to look in their closets and find their skeletons.
Some of the relationship development between Jeffrey and Sara I’m not so clear on – more from Sara, than Jeffrey. She went from being ready to leave town without him to staying and feeling like she couldn’t walk away from Jeffrey in the space of a day or so, and I didn’t quite understand what brought about this whole change. But I don’t think this distracted from the story at all, since this was about so much more than their relationship.
