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Book Summary and Reviews of Broken by Karin Slaughter

Broken by Karin Slaughter

Broken

A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

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  • Jun 2010, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him. He doesn’t understand her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. He doesn’t understand why that man’s widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.

While the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she’s already about to crack. Caught between two complicated and determined women, trying to understand Linton’s passionate distrust of Adams, the facts surrounding Chief Tolliver’s death, and the complexities of this insular town, Trent will unleash a case filled with explosive secrets—and encounter a thin blue line that could be murderous if crossed.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"With its relentlessly grim depiction of the desperate circumstances of those trapped by deep-seated poverty, Slaughter’s latest entry in her series overlays the standard police procedural with a burning sense of social justice." - Booklist

"Starred Review. Avid mystery and law-enforcement thriller fans as well as those who loved her series characters will devour Slaughter's latest." - Library Journal

"As usual in this white-hot series...the ongoing psychological warfare and the physical violence that punctuates it are far more memorable than the unmasking of the real killer." - Kirkus Reviews

"Starred Review. Slaughter keeps the emotional tension high throughout." - Publishers Weekly

This information about Broken was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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techeditor

Combination of Grant County Series and Will Trent Series
BROKEN is a book in a series I've been reading out of order, and I enjoyed it so much. I've read all of Karin Slaughter's series books out of order, and I've always enjoyed them. No one book depends on another; each can be read as a standalone. That’s the best kind of series, each book well written and complete.

This book combines Slaughter’s Will Trent series with her Grant County series when Sara, a doctor at an Atlanta hospital in the Will Trent series, is visiting family in Grant County, where she formerly practiced medicine. She becomes concerned about the apparent suicide of a former patient in the Grant County jail.

Trent, as special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, is assigned to investigate the suicide. He normally lives and works in Atlanta and is already acquainted with Sara. Together and separately they encounter resistance from the Grant County police, not only in their investigation of the suicide but, also, in the department's own dealings with other cases. The corruption in that department is quite different from how it was run when Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, Sara's husband in the Grant County series, was alive.

In the meantime, although Trent and Sara are not romantically involved, the beginnings of something are hinted at. This is probably mostly because Trent is married. Because I've already read books later in the Will Trent series, I know how awful she, Angie, is and how lucky I was that she did not appear in this book.

If you think you are familiar with Angie because you watch the Will Trent television series, you're not. The Angie on TV and the Angie in the books do not look alike, sound alike, or act alike.

Gail L.

thriller, southern
Excellent book. Slaughter is genius at putting together very complex and multi-layered thrillers. Two people are murdered and one other person commits suicide. Are they all connected? Why are the police force and investigation unit acting so secretively? These questions take an entire book to be answered and the twists and turns to get there are inviting, you can't put the book down until the very last page.

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Author Information

Karin Slaughter Author Biography

Photo: Alison Rosa

Karin Slaughter is one of the world's most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 120 countries with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her 21 novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New York Times bestselling stand-alone novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta. Her stand-alone novel Pieces of Her is in development with Netflix, starring Toni Collette, and the Grant County and Will Trent series are in development for television.

Link to Karin Slaughter's Website

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