Mutilated female bodies are turning up all over Atlanta. Atlanta is known for its history of rape and crime, but a “sick man” is creating havoc that is sending the Atlanta police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in circles as they try to solve the puzzles this maniac leaves behind and still stay sane. with his normally uncooperative interdepartmental methods. Grady Homes is a section of Atlanta that is deeply infested with slums and contains much of the areas crime. Prostitutes are everywhere, some giving gifts to the police so they can keep their business.
On the sixth floor of one of the buildings in Grady lies a dead young woman, severely cut, raped, her tongue ripped out, her body lying on the stairs for all to see. The police arrived, did their investigation, making their nasty comments about the body and the buildings, and the girls being murdered as prostitutes. Detective Michael Ormewood arrived after the original police who had found the body. Michael was one of the cops who liked to join the free women in the area. GBI detective Will Trent, a completely different type of police officer, worked with Michael on the investigation.
In 1985, Mary Alice Finney had been found in the same condition as the girls in the Grady Homes section today; mutilated, raped and cut in many parts of their bodies. The same two detectives had worked on that case. John Shelley had been arrested for that murder and was convicted and sent to prison. He had a terrible time in prison as a young man who the other boys loved to impose themselves on. They made Shelley’s insides look like hamburgers through their constant rapes of him. The prison did not take kindly to Shelley, who insisted that he was not guilty of killing Mary Alice Finney.
In 2005, Shelley made her debut and found a world so changed that she didn’t know how she would fit in. Ex-con work was laborious, scarce, and low-paid, which is why she ended up at a car wash doing such menial work. Located in a poor area full of prostitutes and working with some co-workers, some ex-cons too, who wouldn’t let him forget her past, Shelley went ahead and hooked up with Angie, one of the prostitutes who was actually a cop. covert. . He didn’t know that fact, so John worked with her to get information from her in his search for someone connected to the murder he was accused of years ago.
Karin Slaughter takes the reader on a journey through prison, prison recovery (if there is such a thing), and the hard life many lead in such desolate crime areas of Atlanta. The story contains love, both true and false, and with the words used you get the feeling that you are in the middle of this story trying to figure out who is the mutilator, the murderer, the good guys or the bad guys. Granted, Slaughter doesn’t reveal anything as she reads until she digs deeper into the book. A very enjoyable brutal murder mystery story. She highly recommend it.