A young woman runs alone in the woods. She convinces herself she has no reason to be afraid, but she’s wrong. A predator is stalking the women of Grant County. He lingers in the shadows, until the time is right to snatch up his victim.
Eight years later, another woman is brutally attacked and left for dead in the woods. The police write it off as an animal attack. Until a chance assignment takes GBI investigator Will Trent and his long-time girlfriend forensic pathologist Sara Linton to the state penitentiary, where they are confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims he is innocent of a vicious attack for which he has always been the prime suspect. The man insists that he was framed by Grant County’s corrupt law enforcement team led by Jeffery Tolliver, Sara’s dead husband, and that the real culprit is still at large – a serial killer who has been systematically preying on women across the state for nearly a decade.
Although the original trail has gone cold – memories have faded, witnesses have vanished, and evidence has conveniently disappeared – Will and Sara must reopen the cold case and stop the killer before he claims his next victim.
As the tenth instalment in the Will Trent series, The Silent Wife is yet another spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat read from The New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter. Will Trent’s last appearance was in 2019’s The Last Widow, and fans will be thrilled by this latest novel, which not only reveals more about the complicated yet loveable detective, but also features a number of familiar characters from Slaughter’s Grant County Series, which she finished writing in 2007. But don’t let this put you off as The Silent Wife can certainly be read as a standalone.
The past and present collide in The Silent Wife, as Slaughter dips smoothly in and out of two separate time periods, so that readers follow both Jeffery Tolliver investigating the attacks in Grant County as they unfold, and Will Trent attempting to crack the mystery eight years later. The disintegration of Sara’s marriage with Jeffery, her grief over his death, and the conflicted feelings that arise as her and Will dig deeper into this case – and, consequently, her past relationship with Jeffery – form the emotional core of an otherwise dark and unsettling story.
Readers are in for a thrilling ride with plenty of twists and turns to keep them busy. Gripping, unnerving and impossible to put down – there’s a reason Karin Slaughter is hailed as one of the best crime/thriller writers in the business. I can’t wait to see what she delivers next.
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