Criminal by Karin Slaughter

 

Will Trent has never been this confused.  He is in love, he thinks, with Sara Linton, the doctor that has come into his life, but he is still married to Angie.  That marriage is a joke with her disappearing for months at a time but he has known her for most of his life and its hard to break away.  He seems to be in trouble at work since his supervisor, Amanda Wagner, has sent him to the dreaded airport bathroom scene to work instead of using him on criminal cases.

Then several events occur.  A college student has gone missing, a case that Will would normally be all over but Amanda still keeps him away.  Will decides to share more of his past with Sarah and takes her one evening to the ruins of the orphanage house he grew up in between foster families.  He is shocked to encounter Amanda there and they both end up in the basement when a staircase collapses.  Then the worst news.  Will's father, who has been imprisoned for decades after a series of gruesome murders has somehow been paroled.  Amanda has known this and hasn't told Will and he is as angry as he has ever been.  As the story unfolds, more women go missing and the clues point to the father as the killer.  Why was he ever released?

This is the sixth Will Trent novel.  He has been beaten down by life so many times that the reader can't help but cheer for him to get resolution and love.  The reader gets a lot of Will's backstory in this novel and finds out about Will's past as he does.  There is also a great deal of Amanda's backstory and why she picked out Will to mentor when most people would find him an odd choice.  There is much history about the early days of women police and how they banded together to form a network and fight the old boys club.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.