Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter

Been waiting a long time for this book, and finally I got it. Read it in less than two days, and enjoyed it very much. But because of the ending, I will give it 3* instead of 4*. Somewhere on Amazon I read someone who said, regarding this book, that the author 'owns' the characters, and can do with them as she wants, and I agree with that.
But I have to say, if the next book doesn't have Lena Adams clean up her act and grow up, I will get extremely annoyed. Hopefully she will, she shows signs already in this one. Sara and Jeffrey has finally re-married, and while they cannot have kids on their own, they are now about to adopt, and their love is greater than it has ever been. The reader is not left wondering if they can live without each other, because it is said many times, that they can't. Maybe that is why Sara goes with Jeffrey to a crime-scene, some 100 miles from their home in Heartsdale, Grant County, Georgia. Jeffrey's officer Lena Adams is accused of exploding a car, sitting on a football-field in the small town of Reece, which is also Lena's childhood-town. And what makes Jeffrey hurrying down to Reece even more, is that Lena has been arrested, not only for the explosion, but because there are remains of a person sitting in the burnt out car. Lena is stubborn and acting childish as she usually is, and will not reveal anything to Jeffrey or Sara. Sara, who are the Heartsdale pediatrician, is depressed herself, being in the middle of a malpractice suit, brought upon her by the parents of a boy, who died of leukemia. So in the beginning, she is not much help solving anything or making Lena speak. But as the story moves forward, she wakes up and offers to do the post-mortem on the body in the car. Meanwhile Lena is out on her own, doing her own investigation, and actually trying to get Sara and Jeffrey completely out of her hair and the whole situation, which also moves around crystal meth addiction, life in small, rural Southern towns and family secrets best kept secret forever. Or....? This book cannot really be read without knowing the characters from the previous books in the series, otherwise the characters will stand out as even more annoying than they usually do. The ending is surprising, and not exactly conclusive, and hopefully next book in the series will bring a conclusion.