Indelible by Karin Slaughter
Series: Grant County #4
Published by HarperCollins on July 27, 2004
Pages: 358
Source: Library
Narrator: Kathleen Early
Length: 12 hours, 59 minutes
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An officer is shot point-blank in the Grant County police station and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver is wounded, setting off a terrifying hostage situation with medical examiner Sara Linton at the center. Working outside the station, Lena Adams, newly reinstated to the force, and Frank Wallace, Jeffrey's second in command, must try to piece together who the shooter is and how to rescue their friends before Jeffrey dies. For the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey -- with a vengeance ...

Review:

I’m fairly certain that I didn’t take a good, deep breath the entire time I was reading Indelible. This is the best book of the Grant County series so far. Indelible recaptures everything that I felt the last book was missing, and then some. This is the fourth book in the Grant County series, following Blindsighted and Kisscut and A Faint Cold Fear.

Sara goes into the police station to visit Jeffrey, and while she is there: a shooter come in, shoots a bunch of people, and takes a bunch of hostages. Sara is spared injury but Jeffrey is shot, and it is pretty bad. Among the hostages are little children that were touring the police station at the time of the event.

This book used alternating timelines, which was awesome in this story. We get chapters of the present-day, which is the intense hostage situation at the police station. But we also were afforded the opportunity to see Sara and Jeffrey grow into their relationship while on a mini-vacation to Jeffrey’s hometown at the very beginning of their relationship. Somehow, while there, Sara and Jeffrey became entangled in a couple of major crime investigations. Watching these two work together to use their intuition and big-city expertise to fill in the blanks in these investigations gave me the glimpses into Jeffrey’s character that I didn’t know that I craved. And I loved watching Sara and Jeffrey interact as a couple way back then. I feel like it makes so much about their relationship now more clear.

Listen, I love this series and I love these characters so much. I look forward to sitting down with these books, even though they’re grisly and grim, because I love the way that Sara and Jeffrey interact and because I have high hopes for them. I have high hopes for Lena too. The intensity of Indelible has sort of forced these three to reconsider the way they’ve been behaving toward one another, and what they all mean to one another, and I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. It also showed them working under the most pressure imaginable, and the lengths they would go to in order to not only get the job done, but to protect one another.

When I was reading the past-tense chapters, I was a little bit antsy to get back to the hostage situation so I could see how everything would end up. I was terrified for everyone involved. The further I got into the story, as more and more information about Jeffrey’s past is revealed to us, I was hooked on getting as much of the backstory as I could.

I almost want to start the series again now that I understand Jeffrey better.

Ultimately, whatever I feel was lacking in A Faint Cold Fear was more than made up for in this book. It was so good, and super intense, and just exactly what I’ve come to expect from a Karin Slaughter book. I want to pace her books out so I’ll be able to read them for a long time, but the more that I read, the faster I want to read them.

Check out my other reviews in the Grant County Series:

Blindsighted | Kisscut | A Faint Cold Fear | Indelible
Faithless | Beyond Reach

AUDIOBOOK NOTES:

Just like with the previous books in this series, I borrowed the Indelible by Karin Slaughter audiobook from my local library because I can’t imagine reading these without also listening to Kathleen Early narrate the story. I love the way she reads Sara’s part, especially, but she does a great job with all of the characters.

Title: Indelible by Karin Slaughter
Series: Grant County #4
Narrated by: Kathleen Early
Publisher: HarperAudio
Length: 12 hours, 59 minutes, Unabridged