Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: (2001) 5/26/2015; PUBLISHER: Harper; ISBN/ASIN: B00UG8RPS6; PAGES: 468, UNABRIDGED.
Audio: COPYRIGHT: 2/10/2015; ISBN: 9780062381514; PUBLISHER: HarperAudio; DURATION: 11:57:22; PARTS: 11; File Size: 340054 KB; UNABRIDGED
Feature Film or tv: I come across online evidence that a movie is in development
SERIES:
Grant County Series, Book 1

SOME MAJOR CHARACTERS
Sara Linton – (Protagonist) Pediatrician and Coroner
Jeffry Tolliver - Chief of Police and Sara’s X-husband
Cathy Linton – Sara’s mother
Tessa Linton – Sara’s sister
Lena Adams– Police detective and sister of the victim
Sibyl Adams – A blind College Professor – sister of Lena
Hank Adams – Lena and Sibyl’s uncle that raised them

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: I did a search on murder mysteries quite some time ago and this author came up. I like to start with the first book an author wrote, so I went to this one and put it on hold with my Los Angeles Public Library Overload account. When it came available, I was always in the middle of something else, so it was quite a while before I finally listened to it.
What it’s about: A young woman, Sara, who is a pediatrician full-time and a coroner part-time is divorced from a man, Jeffrey, that she still loves. His betrayal caused their break-up. They still work together, since he is the Police Chief, and he is clearly not over her. Meanwhile, Sarah urged by her family to move on with her life, is attempting a date or two. When she stumbles upon a murder victim, she is brought back into proximity with Jeffry, and confronted by a past she tried to bury.
What I thought: The plot is more complex than my description above and was good, but WAY too much blood and violence—and maybe a bit heavy on the conundrums of a struggling romance—almost like a Romance novel gone horribly wrong. I didn’t just listen to the atrocious details of one rape, I listened to four—and two of them more than once as they are explained in detail in the medical examinations. The author’s name should have been enough of a hint, and I initially thought it was one of those cases of someone becoming some version of their sir name, like the Mark Hammer I knew when I worked at a hospital was in the engineering department and did the carpentry type jobs, or Dr. Pain, -- but no, I think this is a pen name. I think so because the Wikipedia article, and anything else I found online has no bio information other than professional. (Aha! Confirmation is in the Dedication of this book to her brother, Billie Bennett)
She does exonerate herself a bit in the forward, dated 2020, of the digital version though, with an explanation of what inspired her to write this novel, her interest in how victims and their loved ones recover from such devastating trauma, and the fact that this hideous crime is so common. She also mentions a well camouflaged homage within this novel, to her favorite, Wuthering Heights.
She also explains that she had to make the choice about tone in the beginning- whether to be realistic or “fade to black” when the bad stuff happens, and she chose to be realistic and graphic, galling into the category of “muscular” female writers. It was all a good explanation, but I still feel like she over-embraces this aspect, making it feel like the whole purpose of the novel is to get to elaborate on the “bad stuff”.

AUTHOR:
Wikipedia says: “Karin Slaughter (born January 6, 1971) is an American crime writer. She has written 21 novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies and have been published in 120 countries.[1][2][3] Her first novel, Blindsighted (2001), was published in 27 languages[4] and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001.[5]
Slaughter also won the 2015 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for her novel Cop Town.[6]
Her 2018 novel, Pieces of Her,[7] was adapted into an eight-episode television series of the same name, released in March 2022 on Netflix.

NARRATOR:
Kathleen Early:
From narrator.page: “NARRATOR:Kathleen Early has performed on Broadway, as well as performing off-Broadway and at a number of regional theaters. She has made forays into the film and television world, winning a Beverly Hills Film Festival Outstanding Female Performance Award for her part in Trip in a Summer Dress. She was most recently seen as Dr. Dasiy Pepman on Grey's Anatomy, and will be Nurse Kathy on the upcoming series Miami Medical.(source: Dreamscape) via goodreads”
GENRE:
Fiction; Medical Thriller; Small Town & Rural Fiction; Murder Mystery

LOCATIONS:
Grant County; Heartsdale, Georgia

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (2001)

SUBJECTS:
Murder; Psychology; Rape; Family Relations; Alcoholism; Medical examinations; Rape; Police procedure


DEDICATION:
"Form my daddy, who taught me to love the South, and for Billie Bennett, who encouraged me to write about it.”


SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1: “Monday”
“Sara Linton leaned back in her chair, mumbling a soft ‘Yes Mama’ into the telephone. She wondered briefly if there would ever come a point in time when she would be too old to be taken over her mother’s knee.
‘Yes, Mama,’ Sara repeated, tapping her pen on the desk. She felt heat coming off her cheeks, and an overwhelming sense of embarrassment took hold.
A soft knock came at the office door, followed by a tentative, ‘Dr. Linton?’
Sara suppressed her relief. ‘I need to go,’ she said to her mother, who shot off one last admonishment before hanging up the phone.
Nelly Morgan slid open the door, giving Sara a hard look. As office manager for the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic, Nelly was the closest thing Sara had to a secretary. Nelly had been running the place for as long as Sara could remember, even as far back as when Sara was a patient here.
Nelly said, ‘Your cheeks are on fire.’
‘I just got yelled at by my mother.’
Nelly raised an eyebrow. ‘I assume for good reason.’
‘Well,’ Sara said, hoping that would end it.
‘The labs on Jimmy Powell came in,’ Nelly said, still eyeing Sara. ‘And the mail,’ she added, dropping a stack of letters on top of the in-basket. The plastic bowed under the added weight.
Sara sighed as she read over the fax. On a good day, she diagnosed earaches and sore throats. Today she would have to tell the parents of a twelve-year-old boy that he had acute myeloblastic leukemia.
‘Not good,’ Nelly guessed. She had worked at the clinic long enough to know how to read a lab report.
‘No, Sara agreed, rubbing her eyes. ‘Not good at all.’ She sat back in her chair, asking, “The Powells are at Disney World, right?’
‘For his birthdays,’ Nelly said. ‘They should be back tonight.’”

RATING:
3 stars. It was well written; I just didn’t care for how graphic it was.

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
6-26-2022 to 7-3-2022 ( )

This is a good one.

Blindsighted started slow, but with a good rhythm to it that made me want to keep going. I’ve read Karin Slaughter before, and it didn’t disappoint - neither did Blindsighted. It is worth the scene setting in the forefront.

The small county of Grant doesn’t see a lot of murders, but when Sybil Adams is found dying on a toilet of the small diner with a cross carved into her torso, things really start to heat up for the sheriff and the coroner; who will see another victim in short order, and then another.

There are a lot of characters involved, none without some baggage and a few with some secrets. Slaughter does a good job of keeping the story moving quickly while not confusing the reader with the large cast. I was deeply invested in Sarah, the coroner, Lena, the half-cocked deputy and sister of the first victim, Jeffrey, the sheriff who never falters in his duties, but sucks as a husband; or does he? The ancillary members of the book round out this incredibly well-written, layered book. You will find yourself speed-reading at the end to find out whodunnit.

TW: There are some graphic sexual violence scenes.

Five stars for Blindsighted. And while I am looking forward to my next Karin Slaughter read, like any good murder mystery, I need to rest in between - this one will haunt me for a day or two. ( )

(2001) Really good first novel by this author. Sara, a part-time coroner and full-time pediatrician in a small town in Georgia finds a blind university professor raped in a bathroom of the local diner. Unable to save her life, she becomes obsessed with finding the murderer along with her ex-husband and his deputy, Lena, who also is the victim's sister. As they try to make sense of this another girl becomes another victim and the trail leads to a man who was convicted of raping Sara several years ago. Red herring, the perp is actually a local pharmacist. Sara winds up killing Jeb as he is attacking her in her house. He had also abducted Lena and hid her in the attic of his house. Once they know who has done it they are able to find her, but too late to save her from the rape and torture Jeb has inflicted. First of a series.KIRKUS REVIEWSince she doubles as pediatrician and coroner for Georgia's Grant County, Dr. Sara Linton is used to trauma. But she doesn't expect it to follow her when she goes to lunch with her plumber sister Tessa and finds Prof. Sibyl Adams, a blind chemist at the Grant Institute of Technology, dying on a toilet seat in the ladies' room from a frightful series of wounds. Once Sara gets Sibyl Adams on the postmortem table, the ghoulish revelations just keep on coming. And her death is only the beginning. Julia Matthews, a coed who's disappeared from her Grant dorm, rapidly turns into another casualty of the same monstrous assailant, a man whose outrages are clearly escalating. Though they don't see eye to eye on very much at all, Sara and her ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, both agree with Sibyl's twin sister Lena Adams, a hotheaded police detective who keeps throwing herself into the case, that the perp isn't Will Harris, the black diner help the town seems to have picked out for the job. But is it really Julia's repellant boyfriend Ryan Gordon, or Jack Allen Wright, the man who raped Sara 12 years ago�a secret she never shared with the man who married her¥or some friend or neighbor too close to think of as a suspect at all?Slaughter's first novel copies Patricia Cornwell's bestselling formula right down to the flaws: gruesome forensics, inventive plotting, strong/imperiled heroine who has problems with down-home male authority, a Perils of Pauline climax. Perfect escapist fare for readers well supplied with Maalox.Pub Date: Sept. 17th, 2001ISBN: 0-688-17457-4Page count: 320ppPublisher: Morrow/HarperCollinsReview Posted Online: May 20th, 2010Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15th, 2001

Solid first novel. The characters were well defined and I particularly liked Sara and her family as well as Jeffrey. The murder was a little graphic, but I can skim through that stuff. The title was spot on, but I won't go into that at the risk of including spoilers. I got this from the library because I loved the Will Trent TV series and this was the first of Slaughter's works. Trent isn't introduced until several books later, but I like to start at the beginning and see origin stories of the various characters. ( )

Typical crime thriller. Deranged psychopath hacking up women... not very creative, but a page tuner. ( )