Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: October 01, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 626957
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The third pulse-pounding novel in the Grant County series from New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter.
Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues -- and the college authorities are eager to avoid a scandal -- but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don’t add up.
Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home. And as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information. But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the subsequent victim...
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Rated by buyers 
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In this third installment of the Grant County series, county medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver (who is also Sara's ex-husband and on again/off again beau) investigate an apparent suicide at the local college campus. However, when Sara's sister is assaulted at the scene then another suicide takes place Sara and Jeffrey suspect that the incidents are related.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey's former partner and now disgruntled campus security officer Lena Adams is using alcohol to try to get over the emotional and physical wounds inflicted upon her while she was held captive by a mad man (story from a previous book.) She attempts to investigate the case on her own, and winds up in a twisted relationship with a potential suspect.
I did not enjoy this book as much as the very first two in the series, because the pacing was not as even - the middle sections dragged. Sara Linton is not as integral to the story as in previous books, but Lena's story is the one that will keep you turning the pages in A Faint Cold Fear. The tone of this book is very dark, but the residents of Grant County are appealing enough to visit anyway.
Rated by buyers -
The book for the most part is well-written. I did care about Sara & Lena up to a point but the story unnecessarily dragged on. But what disappointed me was the unrealisticness of the ending. I saw another reviewer said it is a novel, if you want reality read the news. However, while dramatic freedom is OK for literature, absurdity & stunts insult readers' intelligence. Tessa's survival was absurd. The solution was so far-fetched as to be absurd. And this gimmick of introducing a new plot twist to finally solve the problem, without giving readers any clue beforehand-surprising it was such a mystery anyway, just didn't work for me. And BTW, the cop Jeffrey was clueless & obnoxious, I guess Sara's relationship with him is a prime candidate for "Smart Women, Foolish Choices." And as an aside, somebody should have corrected the spelling of succinylcholine.
Rated by buyers 
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First the positives:
The over-arching storyline is really a pretty good story. I did want to know who did it so I read until the very end.
Now, the negatives:
Too many characters that are introduced just once and then continually referred to from that moment on by their very first name. There are nearly 20 characters that I am supposed to remember with no reminder of what they do in the plot. Just a name and I have to go back in to the book and look up who Kevin or Richard was.
Plot items are brought in (the arrow drawn in the dirt outside the dorm window, for example) that are a big deal for about 3 pages and then are totally dropped.
Lena. Her behavior is insane. She's terrified to be touched (being the victim of a horrific rape), afraid to be out of control and yet she goes to a rave party full of drugs, gets drunk and loses control with a dangerous man who has already hurt her.
The relationship between Lena and Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is so contrived, so "fakey" that it just failed to click at any level for me. Every scene between them seemed forced.
A shotgun IS NOT a rifle. They are both long guns, but they are different. This is not specialized knowledge. Ask anyone who knows a thing about guns and they'll explain the difference. It's not hard. I can't believe no one caught that at the publishing house, either.
Oh, and I love the line on page 180 in which it is explained that Lena was hurt so bad during her rape "that she had needed seven stitches to sew her back together." Wow. Seven stitches.
I also cannot believe that any college campus would let any student, even a student on a skeet-shooting team, keep their gun in their room on campus. Campuses have been gun-sensitive places for years and years. I know of a student who had to live off campus because he refused to leave his skeet guns in a designated locker at a university in Indiana in the 1980s.
Rated by buyers -
This is the third novel in the Grant County series. The plot in this one, revolves around the investigation of a number of apparent suicides, in the local university campus.
I felt the storyline was pretty good, if not quite unputdownable. There is quite a bit of a 'whodunnit' about it. I thought the the books main characters of Sara Linton, and Jeffrey Tolliver, along with Lena Adams were quite believeable. The dialogue between them was good, as well. The book is certainly worth a read, if you are interested in the thriller genre.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a great addition to the Grant County series, and builds nicely on the events of previous books. The ending makes for a nice twist and promises for exciting things to come.
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