Book Review: Fallen

Spoilers!

Karin Slaughter gets me every time. Yes, with the fast-paced action while also getting me to care deeply about her main characters. Yes, with the intricately connected plots that also tie up threads she’s expertly hinted at in prior books. And yes, with the carefully-crafted, well-reasoned plot twists. But also, with 2011’s Fallen, it wasn’t until the last few pages of the book that the title of the book itself hit me, and that’s only because Sara Linton explicitly stated it. So, yes, Slaughter got me there, too. Fallen is the fifth book in the Will Trent series, and Slaughter started aforementioned “threads” of Will and Sara getting together, but it wasn’t until this book that they truly allowed themselves to “fall” for the other. And even Angie, Will’s “wife,” one of the most awful, abusive women in popular fiction, couldn’t stop the fall. (I am so ready for Angie to be out of the picture and sure hope that’s finalized in the sixth book!)

But aside from their blossoming romance, Fallen is actually not much about Will Trent or Sara Linton at all. Instead, Slaughter wraps up the story of Faith Mitchell and her mother, Evelyn, that’s been dangling over the series from the beginning. Will brought down Evelyn’s narcotics team for skimming money off of their drug busts. She also used to work for the Atlanta Police Department like Faith. The investigation never quite ensnared Evelyn, but she retired thereafter anyway. Faith didn’t believe her mom was dirty and because of that belief, and Will’s earnestly good nature, she could partner with him at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation under the leadership of Amanda Wagner, who is akin to Angie in the way she demeans and belittles Will (Evelyn will later claim that Amanda loves him like the son she never had, but she has a funny way of showing it!).

Faith’s backstory and present story is complicated further by a.) having a child at 14, which caused a rift in her family, particularly among her father and older brother; and b.) she has a new baby with another man who is not in the picture. This and Evelyn’s past all come to a head in the book when seemingly disparate youth gangs of Mexicans and Asians target Evelyn and kidnap her. Faith happens to walk in on the scene (thanks to her motherly intuition that something was wrong) and kills two of them. Evelyn already killed one. Another is mortally wounded and found next to the hospital dumpster by Sara later. And finally, Evelyn’s “love interest,” it seems, is found dead in the trunk of her car. What a mess! Fallen starts off with this unbelievable scene in the suburbs and never lets up.

Initially, Amanda, Will, and Faith think the kidnappers are a bunch of amateur teens getting their rocks off by killing people and seeking the cut of money from the dirty narcotics gang Evelyn ran in the ’70s. Once they heard about it from one of Evelyn’s former underlings, who was getting sober in a rehab facility, the hunt was on. The GBI team is right about that, at least for most of the gang. There is one gang member, though, Caleb, who isn’t interested in money at all. Instead, he has a 20-year vendetta against Evelyn. She’s his son, who was given away after an extramarital affair and he’s upset about that. Despite growing up in a loving home that Evelyn arranged and helped fund (she was not actually dirty, although if the team she lead were, she’s at least negligent or incompetent to not have noticed it sooner), Caleb falls into drugs and the gang life. He wants to kill Evelyn and kill Faith, so her two children are left without a mother just like he was. Oh, and Caleb killed the man in the trunk, his father.

Amanda, who came up through the male-dominated police ranks with Evelyn, is hellbent on saving her, but it clouds her judgment at times, which is what Will (and Sara) are there for, as they can steer the investigation and the action needed in a better direction. Eventually, I think eight people end up dead from this gang, including Caleb, all because of his 20-year vendetta. Another member of Evelyn’s crew from the ’70s is killed in prison, even though he’s on death row. I’m still not sure the why or how of that one. Evelyn was put through the wringer, too: they broke her leg, her nose, cut off her finger, knocked her around the head a bunch, broke her ribs, and who knows what else. But she survived, thanks to Will’s daring and courage, Sara’s curiosity and help, Amanda’s headstrong determination to rescue her, and of course, Faith’s love for her mother.

I say this every time I read Slaughter, but it’s always worth repeating. Slaughter is so, so good. If you’ve never read Slaughter, you should! You don’t even have to read the Sara Linton series or the Will Trent series in order, just dive in and find your way. You’re sure to “fall” for them, as I clearly have.