The internationally bestselling author "squarely in the ranks of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs" (Publishers Weekly) shows off her superb talent with this brilliantly conceived, skillfully executed tale of suspense.

In Karin Slaughter's exciting new thriller, 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 ...

Deftly interweaving present and past, Slaughter -- dubbed "the new face of crime" by Book magazine -- offers another brilliant knife-edge tale of suspense that cements her place among the most outstanding practitioners of crime fiction today.

Becky Ann Baker's work on Broadway includes Titanic and Assassins; among her film credits are Men in Black, A Simple Plan, and Sabrina; on TV she starred in Freaks and Geeks.

Karin Slaughter is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 36 languages, with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her sixteen novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant New York Times bestselling novel Pretty Girls. A native of Georgia, Karin currently lives in Atlanta. Her Will Trent series, Grant County series, and standalone novel Cop Town are all in development for film and television.

On top of all this, Indelible is a prequel, designed in part to fill in the backgrounds of Sara and Jeffrey, who recur in other Slaughter novels. The question is whether the author does justice to the multiple layers of her material.

Almost from the start, I found the flashback the more interesting of the two storylines. Mayhem in a police station, followed by a hostage-taking, may be ideal thriller fare, but one of Slaughter's strengths is her charting of post-sexual-revolution male-female dynamics, and this comes to the fore in the earlier, Alabama sequences. At that stage, Sara and Jeffrey have slept together several times but still hardly know each other, and much of what his friends say about him comes as news to her -- that he went to college, for example. What she does know is that he deserves the nickname his pals greet him with -- Slick -- so much so that she's of two minds about his riposte to her observation that a handsome, randy guy like him must have "screwed practically every woman in town": "They were just place-holders while I waited for you," he says. It's a perfect line, especially when delivered by a man who acts on Sara "like some drug that she could not get enough of," and she wants very much to believe him. But he's not Slick for nothing, is he?

Their process of getting acquainted becomes even more fraught when Sara and Jeffrey duck into a local cave to escape a rainstorm and discover a human skeleton inside, its skull bashed in such a way as to indicate homicide. Turns out that Jeffrey's old friends -- some of whom are policemen, too -- figure in both cases: the double shooting and the remains in the cave. Just how they are implicated lies at the heart of the mystery that unfolds as the young lovers keep sparring and sizing each other up.

For that matter, the novel's two main foci -- past murders and present-day hostage crisis -- are not as discrete as they first appear. The main thread tying them together is all the sleeping around engaged in by the younger generation of Alabama townspeople. (The not-so-subliminal message is that sex is apt to be more powerful -- and have more lasting effects -- than bed-hopping teenagers would like to believe.)

Throughout Indelible, Slaughter excels at pitting one strong character against another. A long conversation between Sara and her mother, as Sara gets ready to go off for a weekend with Jeffrey and her mother takes over the packing, epitomizes the blend of love, bossiness, resistance, banter and tenuous compromise that shapes relations between a tough-minded parent and a willful child. And in Slaughter's steady hands, the trajectory of Sara and Jeffrey's off-and-on romance is clear and convincing.

Ultimately, though, too much happens in this book. For all its deaths and splattered walls and countdowns toward the moment when the cops will rush their own station house, the hostage crisis gets shortchanged. Maybe Slaughter asked too much of herself in trying to fuse a prequel with an update (the outcome of the present-day crisis sets the stage for a new act in the Sara-Jeffrey relationship). To readers who concentrate on the Alabama murder case, however, Indelible will give considerable pleasure.
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Chapter One

8:55 A.M.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Marla Simms bellowed, givingSara a pointed look over her silver-rimmed bifocals. The secretary forthe police station held a magazine in her arthritic hands, but she set itaside, indicating she had plenty of time to talk.

Sara forced some cheer into her voice, though she had purposefullytimed her visit for Marla's coffee break. "Hey, Marla. How're youdoing?"

The old woman stared for a beat, a tinge of disapproval putting acrease in her naturally down-turned lips. Sara forced herself not tosquirm. Marla had taught the children's Sunday school class at thePrimitive Baptist from the day they opened the front doors, and shecould still put the fear of God into anyone in town who'd been bornafter 1952.

She kept her eyes locked on Sara. "Haven't seen you around herein a while."

"Hm," Sara offered, glancing over Marla's shoulder, trying to seeinto Jeffrey's office. His door was open but he was not behind hisdesk. The squad room was empty, which meant he was probably inthe back. Sara knew she should just walk behind the counter andfind him herself -- she had done it hundreds of times before -- but survivor's instinct kept her from crossing that bridge without first payingthe troll.

Marla sat back in her chair, her arms folded. "Nice day out," shesaid, her tone still casual.

Sara glanced out the door at Main Street, where heat made the asphaltlook wavy. The air this morning was humid enough to openevery pore on her body. "Sure is."

"And don't you look pretty this morning," Marla continued, indicatingthe linen dress Sara had chosen after going through nearlyevery item of clothing in her closet. "What's the occasion?"

"Nothing special," Sara lied. Before she knew what she was doing,she started to fidget with her briefcase, shifting from one foot to theother like she was four instead of nearly forty.

A glimmer of victory flashed in the older woman's eyes. She drewout the silence a bit more before asking, "How's your mama andthem?"

"Good," Sara answered, trying not to sound too circumspect. Shewasn't naive enough to believe that her private life was no one else'sbusiness -- in a county as small as Grant, Sara could barely sneezewithout the phone ringing from up the street with a helpful "Blessyou" -- but she would be damned if she'd make it easy for them togather their information.

"And your sister?"

Sara was about to respond when Brad Stephens saved her by trippingthrough the front door. The young patrolman caught himselfbefore he fell flat on his face, but the momentum popped his hat offhis head and onto the floor at Sara's feet. His gun belt and nightstickflopped under his arms like extra appendages. Behind him, a gaggleof prepubescent children squawked with laughter at his less-than-gracefulentrance.

"Oh," Brad said, looking at Sara, then back to the kids, then atSara again. He picked up his hat, brushing it off with more care thanwas warranted. She imagined he could not decide which was moreembarrassing: eight 10-year-olds laughing at his clumsiness or his formerpediatrician fighting an obvious smile of amusement.

Apparently, the latter was worse. He turned back to the group, hisvoice deeper than usual as if to assert some authority. "This, of course,is the station house, where we do business. Police business. Uh, andwe're in the lobby now." Brad glanced at Sara. To call the area wherethey stood a lobby was a bit of a stretch. The room was barely ten feetby eight, with a cement block wall opposite the glass door at the entrance.A row of photographs showing various squads in the GrantCounty police force lined the wall to Sara's right, a large portrait in thecenter showing Mac Anders, the only police officer in the history ofthe force who had been killed in the line of duty.

Across from the portrait gallery, Marla stood sentry behind a tallbeige laminate counter that separated visitors from the squad room.She was not a naturally short woman, but age had made her so bycrooking her body into a nearly perfect question mark. Her glasseswere usually halfway down the bridge of her nose, and Sara, whowore glasses to read, was always tempted to push them back up. Notthat Sara would ever do such a thing. For all Marla knew about everybodyand their neighbor -- and their dog -- in town, not much wasknown about her. She was a widow with no children. Her husbandhad died in the Second World War. She had always lived on Hemlock,which was two streets over from Sara's parents. She knitted and shetaught Sunday school and worked full-time at the station answeringphones and trying to make sense of the mountains of paperwork.These facts hardly offered great insight into Marla Simms. Still, Saraalways thought there had to be more to the life of a woman who hadlived some eighty-odd years, even if she'd lived all of them in the samehouse where she had been born.

Brad continued his tour of the station, pointing to the large, openroom behind Marla. "Back there's where the detectives and patrolofficers like myself conduct their business ... calls and whatnot. Talkingto witnesses, writing reports, typing stuff into the computer, and,uh ..." His voice trailed off as he finally noticed he was losing hisaudience. Most of the children could barely see over the counter.Even if they could, thirty empty desks spread out in rows of five withvarious sizes of filing cabinets between them were hardly attention grabbing. Sara imagined the kids were wishing they had stayed inschool today ...