Cop Town by Karin Slaughter

Cop Town by Karin Slaughter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is Slaughter's first stand-alone novel and I have read all of her other books from the series. This is a difficult book for me to rate and review. It was a good story but so very different from her others and just not what I would expect from a "Karin Slaughter" thriller. In her "Acknowledgements" at the back of the book I think the author herself sums up what is different and unexpected to her fans about this book when she calls out to "Mo Hayder: I am sorry so few people die horribly in this one. Next time." Really that call out should have been to her entire fan-base. Slaughter is a good writer and this is a good cop story, technically a serial killer case, though with an execution-style M.O.; it's an entertaining case and wowed me with the reveal of the killer. I liked the characters and enjoyed the look back at the 1970s world of policing with the rampant sexism and racism. However, if Slaughter's name hadn't been on the book I doubt I would have read it; I'm not usually into police crime novels. I like the dark, gritty serial killer cases where "people die horribly" and that's what I expect from Slaughter. So I'm certainly acknowledging that this is a good, well-written story that I did enjoy and I won't deny the book its due but as a Slaughter fan I must say I am disappointed that she presented us with a book that is less stellar than her serial killer genre thrillers (namely all her other novels).



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