Undone by Karin Slaughter

Undone by Karin Slaughter (the UK edition is called genesis) combines the characters from Slaughter's Grant County-series and the series about Atlanta detectives Will Trent and Faith Mitchell.

One of the main characters in the Grant County-series is Sara Linton, coroner and pediatrician in a small town in Georgia. The main characters of the Atlanta-series are, as mentioned above, the detectives Will Trent and Faith Mitchell.

In Undone, Sara has moved to Atlanta to lick her (very deep) wounds from the previous novel in the Grant County-series. That was called Beyond Reach (and Skin Privilege in the UK edition), and if you plan to read this series, or maybe already read some of them, but not Beyond Reach, I do not recommend reading Undone, although they can easily stand alone. Undone just has too many spoilers if you want to read them in order. I shall avoid spoilers here, though.

Combining the two series in this book was a good move, I think. I had personally grown tired with some of the characters from the Grant County-series, and was relieved that I did not have to read about them yet again, although the whole series has grown a lot on me over the years.

We meet the main characters in the first chapter, where Will and Faith visits the ER where Sara is now working as an ER doc. Faith has been passing out and feeling unwell, and finally ends up in the ER. She has not been in the ER for long before the ER receives another patient: a young woman who is terribly mutilated, but still alive - barely. Sara treats her as best as she can, discover some horrible things, and within minutes Will is on his way to where she was found - after she was run over by a car.

Now the story takes up speed, horrendous things are uncovered from the earth, literally, and soon another woman goes missing. Will, Faith (who is being treated for her fainting-spells) and Sara digs into the case, which becomes uglier by the hour.

The case and the plot is interesting, and Karin Slaughter writes well and is good in building up characters. The life-stories (which we also know from previous books in the two series) are being told again, we learn new details about the characters and it all adds to the tension and excitement of the story. I would have liked a plot which was a bit more tight (I did guess most of it about half way through, unfortunately), and I would have liked some of the characters to "snap out of it", but that is a feeling I generally have with Slaughter's books.

All in all I think Undone is a rather good read and perfect for a lazy day - either on the couch or the beach :o) I really cannot write much more without giving away the plot of the previous books, and I think you should read it yourself :o)

Also reviewed by Lynda from Lynda's Book Blog.