The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter

 

Someone is killing women in Georgia in a particularly brutal fashion.  He kidnaps them, drugs them and takes them to the woods where he rapes them.  Then as the oral drug becomes less effective, he uses a weapon to stab the spinal cord, paralyzing them so he can continue to visit them and rape them before he makes his final visit where he beats and murders them.

The case falls to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation which means Will Trent and his partner Faith.  Sara Linton, Will's love, is involved as well as she is the pathologist for the GBI.  She is involved in a different way as well.  The cases started in Grant County where Sara grew up.  The first three cases were not recognized as the work of a serial killer and a local drug dealer and pedophile was convicted of the cases under the direction of Sara's first husband, Jeffrey, who was the chief of police there.  Now it appears he got that all wrong and the inmate has been serving time for crimes he didn't commit.  

But the cases went on after the inmate was sent to prison although they weren't recognized as such.  The cases after the Grant County ones were spread out over different counties and usually written off as accidents from hiking or camping.  By now there are almost twenty cases and another woman is missing.  Can the team find the killer before he strikes again?

This is the tenth novel in the Will Trent/Sara Linton series.  As usual, there is tension between Sara and Will as he can't believe that Sara actually loves him, especially since she loved Jeffrey so much.  The characters from other books in the series such as Amanda the GBI boss and Sara's family are continued in this book and the case is as twisty and depraved as many others the team has solved.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.