Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Fallen (Will Trent #5)

by Karin Slaughter (Goodreads Author)

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 8,005 ratings · 687 reviews

There’s no police training stronger than a cop’s instinct. Faith Mitchell’s mother isn’t answering her phone. Her front door is open. There’s a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother’s house, gun drawn. She s...more

Hardcover, 387 pages

Published June 21st 2011 by Delacorte Press (first published 2011)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Mystery/Thriller/Suspense Novels Of 2011

10th out of 290 books — 965 voters

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

What's the book you can't wait to read this summer?

283rd out of 2,050 books — 4,852 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jun 30, 2011 Wendy Darling rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen

Shelves: adult, thriller-suspense, read-2011, 2011-favorites, 2011-publication, gory

4.5 stars I have a theory that it's nearly impossible to read a Karin Slaughter book in more than a day. She's one of the few authors whose books I NEED to get and devour on the day they're released because I'm so engrossed in the characters and have been waiting a whole year to find out what happens to them next. If you like your murder mysteries on the dark and gritty side, if you're fascinated by the seething violence lurking in the human psyche, this author is a definitely going to make your...more

like 27 likes · see review

Jul 14, 2011 Kristina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: brain-candy, fiction, nook-book, police-procedural

Karin Slaughter is my favorite go-to author for brain-candy police procedural reading. Her plots are fast-paced and interesting and her characters are so well-written. You may not like all of them and they may frustrate the hell out of you, but you are not bored by them. I have been waiting forever for this book to become available. I read it pretty much in 24 hours. It was so good. The plot is very good and kept me reading till 1 am this morning (despite the fact that I had to be up at 6am for...more

like 10 likes · see review

Nov 25, 2012 Pam rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. I've always liked Sara and Jeffrey and I wasn't happy that Jeffrey died. Will has not been one of my favorite people, he's so awkward and subservient acting especially with Amanda. This story let me see that he can be more and with Sara's love maybe he can finally feel that he deserves better than Angie. I was hoping Angie would actually shoot herself and free Will from her. I liked the storyline about Faith and her Mother. I s...more

like · see review

Nov 04, 2012 Sophie Bane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Me and my Mom are pretty devoted fans of Karin Slaughter – I think I’ve probably read most, if not all, of her books and this one didn’t disappoint. What is particularly good about Karin’s work is that she managed to solve the problem of series’ which go on for too long by merging two series together – her Grant County (Sara Linton) books and her Atlanta (Will Trent) series. This works really well – the shock at the end of the last Grant County book (Skin Privilege, I think) which I won’t spoil...more Me and my Mom are pretty devoted fans of Karin Slaughter – I think I’ve probably read most, if not all, of her books and this one didn’t disappoint. What is particularly good about Karin’s work is that she managed to solve the problem of series’ which go on for too long by merging two series together – her Grant County (Sara Linton) books and her Atlanta (Will Trent) series. This works really well – the shock at the end of the last Grant County book (Skin Privilege, I think) which I won’t spoil here because it really IS a shock rather than a twist, had to mean the end of that series, but Sara Linton is too good a character to lose.

This is one of Slaughter’s key strengths – her characters are always three-dimensional, and always have their flaws. Few of her characters are ever either all-good or all-bad, and that really comes to the fore with Fallen. When Special Agent Faith Mitchell gets home late from work and finds her baby locked in the shed, her mother missing, a dead man in the laundry room and two armed men who she kills in a foot chase, the spotlight falls on her mother Evelyn, a former (now retired) high-ranking police officer.

In one of the previous novels (I forget which now), Will Trent landed the thankless task of investigating Faith’s mother and her team for corruption, and several of Evelyn’s officers were convicted of offences relating to drug money. That particular novel was ended very ambiguously in relation to Evelyn’s involvement, and that’s where this novel picks up. Will still seems convinced that Evelyn had to be on the take (or whatever the American version, rather than the Life on Mars terminology, is) but Will’s boss Amanda who is a close friend of Evelyn refuses to accept this, even when the investigation suggests that the carnage inside Faith’s house is linked to her days on the drugs squad.

What is interesting in this novel is revisiting the consequences of the corruption on Evelyn’s team – in particular, the chapter where Will and Amanda go to visit Evelyn’s former second in command Boyd Spivey, who is on death row and has just received his execution date, is very well handled, and the nuances of the character and his motivations are explored in an even-handed way. Despite the novel being, in part, about the bad consequences of corruption, it doesn’t ever come across as judgemental or self-righteous, which would be easy to fall into.

The particular strength of this novel, following on from the previous one in which Will investigates Evelyn and her team, is the ambiguity about Evelyn’s guilt or otherwise. To keep this going throughout the book, and to have the reader sway from one side to the other so many times with a slow trickle of clues is skilful, and keeps the tension going right to the end. Slaughter has always been a master of that – I can’t recall any of her books where the ‘reveal’ of the twist didn’t come at exactly the right point, giving the reader only a couple of pages in which to feel smug and self-satisfied having guessed the twist before it is revealed.

Slaughter is very good at writing strong female characters without making them either clones of each other or cliched – in this novel, Sara, Faith, Evelyn, Amanda and even Evelyn’s elderly neighbour are all strong women in different ways, and it’s that nuance of characterisation that keeps me interested in the series. Will is also a great character, and his dyslexia is an interesting angle to explore, as is his troubled childhood and extremely dysfunctional relationship with his wife Angie, one of the most damaged and unpleasant characters in crime fiction (apart from all of the serial killers, that is).

Slaughter’s character development over several novels really starts to pay off here, as the more minor characters from previous novels (Evelyn, Angie, Faith’s son Jeremy and brother Zeke) are brought centre-stage; it’s not like in Eastenders where they suddenly find a whole swath of long-lost relatives that nobody has ever spoken of before but who immediately move into the family home and start recycling old storylines. You feel like you already have a sense of these characters and how they might behave before the novel starts.

The one thing I wasn’t so keen on in this novel was Faith’s behaviour while her mother is missing. There were a few things that she did that I thought were a little out of character for a law-enforcement officer, even taking into account the stress of the situation, but this was minor irritation rather than unsurmountable flaw.

Karin Slaughter is often cited in any discussions about female crime writers being too violent or too gruesome (an argument I don’t have much time for anyway as its undercurrent seems to be that men can be as violent as they like in print but women should be held to a different, more ‘ladylike’ standard) and this novel certainly has some graphic descriptions, but in my opinion Slaughter’s use of violence is generally justified by and proportionate to the plot, and Fallen is no exception. Though if you haven’t read any of her work before, it’s worth being aware of the level of violence in the books, and it’s definitely worth starting at the beginning of the Grant County series if you’re going to get the most out of the character and story development arcs across both series.

I read this book in a day and a half, and it really is good enough to grip you like that. I’ll certainly be looking forward to her next novel.
(less)

like · see review

Sep 05, 2012 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just not my favorite. It was the first time I felt Ms. Slaughter went a little...soap opera-ish. There was more romance and family drama than I, personally, like mixed in with my cop/suspense genre.

I LOVE Karin Slaughter's books. In the past month I've read and reviewed "Fractured" and "Undone"...both were great cop/suspense novels. And, in many ways, "Fallen" was good, too. It kept me reading and kept me guessing til the very end. But "Fallen" started to feel just a LITTLE like a Lifetime Movie...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 16, 2012 Elise Moto rated it 3 of 5 stars

To tell the truth, with this one I found myself yawning over the detailed forensics and skipping all of it to get to what is most interesting, which is Will and Sara's relationship. I found myself losing interest in the main plot, which was the disappearance of Faith's mother. I think my thing is characters, not forensics and procedures. As mentioned regarding other books in this series, Slaughter has done an about-turn with Angie, suddenly portraying her as a 'bee-atch' who delights in pushing...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 07, 2012 Godzilla rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, 2012

Another book passed on by my Mother In law, and frankly I must have upset her recently in some way. This was amazingly disappointing for a Karin Slaughter book.

Previous books of hers have torn along at a frantic pace, real page turners, but this felt like a plodding old horse, crying out to be put out of it's misery.

Normally the plots are rivetting and unfold in unexpected ways. This felt like a non-story from start to finish. It was clear that the missing mother was alive, and was likely to rem...more

like 2 likes · see review

Jul 04, 2012 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-suspense

As escape fiction goes, there are many good things to say about Karin Slaughter's writing. I can't help but wish, though, that her characters were crafted less with an ax and more with a scalpel. In terms of motivation, every element of the book seemed way over the top.

Although Will is a skilled and experienced detective, he drags around his juvenile lack of self-esteem like a sack of rocks, and the reader is reminded ad nauseum about his dyslexia. Family secrets are common and interesting, but...more

like 1 like · see review

Jul 01, 2012 Melbourne on my mind rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, crime

Plot summary: Faith Mitchell comes home from work one day to find her baby daughter locked in the shed and her mother, the former Atlanta police chief, missing. When she enters the house without waiting for back-up, she finds two more intruders. Within minutes, they're dead and she has no leads to finding her mother. Suspended from duty, Faith must rely on her partner, GBI Agent Will Trent, and Dr Sara Linton to piece things together and find the culprit and her mother, before it's too late.

Thou...more

like · see review

Jun 19, 2012 Best Crime Books rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book opens up with a dramatic starter as Faith returns to her mother's house and is immediately put in the middle of what looks like a war zone. It makes for some high octane reading very early on. It certainly put me in the frame of mind for the investigation that would follow this crazy situation.

I found that by reading the Will Trent books, I had a feel for the characters Will and Faith, but beyond that there were a lot of unanswered questions. This book seems to address Faith and her hi...more This book opens up with a dramatic starter as Faith returns to her mother's house and is immediately put in the middle of what looks like a war zone. It makes for some high octane reading very early on. It certainly put me in the frame of mind for the investigation that would follow this crazy situation.

I found that by reading the Will Trent books, I had a feel for the characters Will and Faith, but beyond that there were a lot of unanswered questions. This book seems to address Faith and her history which I liked. The books pace starts kind of frenzied and to be honest doesn't let up much pace at all throughout the book, it almost made me read with a sense of urgency.

The story however does require an element of concentration, there are a lot of theories and characters names very early on meaning you really do need to pay attention to follow these threads all the way through. Sadly the downside to such an intense book is that as readers you are so drawn in you forget your surroundings (never good when you forget to turn the bath off').

As the book gets going we see Will Trent with the help of Sara Linton try to discover who is behind the disappearance of Faith's mother. OF course Will has his doubts about Evelyn, but for the sake of his partner he does everything in his power to find her, even if it means breaking the rules. Will is not the sort of character to break the rules, which is where his boss, and Evelyn's close friend, Amanda Wagner comes into play.

Amanda is a character that is slightly off kilter, but a character that I absolutely adore. She is a no nonsense old school woman that is determined to find her friend, and she doesn't care who she has to lie to or trample on to find her. Sara Linton plays the lesser role in the overall story, but as other parts of the series begin to develop, you can see where she is starting to get her life back together.

Following the end of the Grant County series, I was convinced that there would never be a better male lead that Jeffrey Tolliver. I was so wrong, and if I am being completely honest, a little bit smitten with my `new' favourite male lead Will Trent.

As the story reaches its climax, lots of the parts of the puzzle start to come together. The threads that had been interwoven throughout the book now start to be explained, and the ending was absolutely brilliant.

Yet again I read a fast paced, tense thriller by Karin Slaughter that left me feeling sad I had finished another instalment. Having said that it again has left us as readers with the perfect platform for the next part of the series, and boy do I want to know how that goes. I cannot praise Karin Slaughter highly enough, she is an author that has taken chances, but knew exactly where they were leading, and the pathway she took was sheer genius. If you haven't read her work before I would strongly suggest you start at the beginning and work your way through them, you won't be disappointed. (less)

like · see review

Jun 04, 2012 Angela Risner rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was SO thrilled to receive this as part of the Amazon program, as I had already preordered it for my Kindle. But I happily took it in book format over a month earlier than the release date. :D

I have been thrilled with most of Karin Slaughter's books and this one is no exception. The best part about this book? NO LENA.

This is the third book to feature Will Trent and Faith Mitchell, and it also reunites them with Dr. Sara Linton. It opens with Faith returning to her mother's home to pick up her...more

like · see review

Apr 27, 2012 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

I quite like Will here. However, even though theoretically the case is Faith-centric I found myself reading her chapters more quickly to get them over with; aside from the beginning and end she spends a lot of time flailing about uselessly. Sara is still boring and likable. I did appreciate getting background on Amanda/Evelyn; their relationship and past were probably the most enjoyable part of the book. The mystery...was done well until we find out the motive behind it, when it becomes very soa...more I quite like Will here. However, even though theoretically the case is Faith-centric I found myself reading her chapters more quickly to get them over with; aside from the beginning and end she spends a lot of time flailing about uselessly. Sara is still boring and likable. I did appreciate getting background on Amanda/Evelyn; their relationship and past were probably the most enjoyable part of the book. The mystery...was done well until we find out the motive behind it, when it becomes very soap opera-ish and dumb.

Notes while Reading: (view spoiler)(less)

like 1 like · see review

Mar 05, 2012 Barbara Elsborg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another brilliant novel from a fabulous writer that makes me ashamed to call myself a writer! This is a complex, multi-layered book with twists and turns and moments of suspense that force you to read fast and turn the page. I don't know of many authors who could draw a character like Will Trent and get the reader to love him so much. Damaged heroes are always popular but Will is an abused guy - abused by his wife and it would be so easy to lose respect for him for not doing something about his...more

like 1 like · see review

Dec 18, 2011 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The first half of Fallen by Karin Slaughter is a great read. The mother of Will Trent's partner Faith is kidnapped. The clues point to dirty cops, drugs, stolen money and much else. However, by the second half, the novel gets too caught up in the past lives of Will's boss and Faith's mother, and frankly, I didn't care. There are too many names to keep track of and too many extraneous plot elements to tease out. Roger Ling (a bad guy with too little plot time) tells Will Trent what's what with Fa...more

like 2 likes · see review

Nov 23, 2011 JoAnne Pulcino rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-thriller, adult-fiction-and-e-book, large-print, audio

FALLEN
By Karin Slaughter
The author’s native Georgia almost becomes another character in this gripping, expertly written novel. This is an exciting, complex thriller by an author who is also a great storyteller.
Faith Mitchell is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation detective who stumbles on her own mother’s kidnapping, and becomes both a witness and a suspect. She makes it her personal quest to save her mother and find the motive for the kidnapping.
Working without any knowledge of what the kidnappe...more

like 1 like · see review

Oct 26, 2011 Gloria Feit rated it 4 of 5 stars

In her eleventh novel, Karin Slaughter brings us back to Georgia. Agent Faith Mitchell, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, finds that what started out as a normal workday becomes something else entirely. [A bit of background: A cop for 15 years, Faith is a single mom, diabetic, 34 years old, and a former detective with the Atlanta homicide squad; her mother has helped care for Faith’s four-month old baby for the past two months, since Faith went back to work.] When Faith drives up to the h...more In her eleventh novel, Karin Slaughter brings us back to Georgia. Agent Faith Mitchell, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, finds that what started out as a normal workday becomes something else entirely. [A bit of background: A cop for 15 years, Faith is a single mom, diabetic, 34 years old, and a former detective with the Atlanta homicide squad; her mother has helped care for Faith’s four-month old baby for the past two months, since Faith went back to work.] When Faith drives up to the house, she immediately sees a bloody handprint on the front door. Before the ensuing confrontation is over, three men have been shot to death – two at Faith’s hand; she finds her baby locked in a shed; the house has been ransacked; and her mother is missing. Faith’s mother, a decorated police officer, had been in charge of the narcotics division, and two of the three dead men appear to be members of a local Hispanic gang known to control the drug trade in Atlanta.

Will Trent, Faith’s old partner in the GBI, is handling the investigation; there is a bit of a conflict of interest at work here: Amanda Wagner, the deputy director and his boss, had been the BFF [before the term existed] of Evelyn Mitchell, Faith’s mother, a 63-year-old widow and a cop for nearly forty years, who had been implicated in a sting operation that had been headed by Will, to weed out dirty cops, part of the upshot of which was her forced retirement.

Will has a complex relationship with Sara Linton, formerly a county coroner and now a pediatric attending physician in the emergency department of a local Atlanta hospital. Widow of the county’s former police chief, at 5’11”, with red hair, Sara is a striking woman. The ‘complexity’ of her relationship with Will is due to the fact that he is still married, sort of. The relationship between him and his wife is strange, to say the least.

The plot is intricate, the main characters each strong yet vulnerable; the book is a wholly satisfying, fast read, and it is recommended.
(less)

like · see review

Oct 22, 2011 Vicki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Karin Slaughter is a prolific crime fiction author who is well known in the New York Times Bestselling Author circles. She does not shy away from evil and the grisly crimes that go with that, but at the same time she creates characters who are believable, likable, and clever enough to solve the crimes they must confront.

She chooses Atlanta and environs as a frequent setting, and as a native of Georgia, she is spot on in the detail of the area that she layers in to make the stories so believable....more Karin Slaughter is a prolific crime fiction author who is well known in the New York Times Bestselling Author circles. She does not shy away from evil and the grisly crimes that go with that, but at the same time she creates characters who are believable, likable, and clever enough to solve the crimes they must confront.

She chooses Atlanta and environs as a frequent setting, and as a native of Georgia, she is spot on in the detail of the area that she layers in to make the stories so believable. In Fallen, she brings back characters who have appeared in earlier books, but the plot and action stand on their own (if it happens to be the first Slaughter novel the reader comes across).

The opening paragraphs reveal the tension the featured character Faith Mitchell is experiencing as she drives to her mom's after a Saturday morning police training that has run late. Her mom is keeping her infant daughter, Faith feels guilt that she is running a couple of hours late, she has not eaten and her diabetes symptoms are kicking in, and she cannot raise her mom on her cell phone. As soon as she arrives, she senses that something is not right. Her mom Evelyn Mitchell, a retired police officer herself, has left her car in the drive, Faith senses that someone is looking at her behind the shifting curtain and there is unfamiliar heavy metal music blaring from the house. Almost simultaneously, she sees blood on the house door and hears a child's cry from beyond the locked storage room off the back of the house. She realizes it is her baby Emma and she has been locked in, still in her infant carrier!

In spite of all her training, she ignores the mandate to wait for back up. Though she does urgently call the police before entering, her concern for her mother overrules the wisdom of waiting. Faith discovers a recently killed man in the laundry room off the kitchen and discovers two other armed men in the house. To her horror, her mother is nowhere to be seen and the house has been thoroughly trashed. When the back up arrives several minutes later, the two armed men are dead and Faith seems incoherent.

Her partner Agent Will Trent is soon on the scene as is trauma doctor Sara Linton. They realize that Faith is sinking into crisis for ignoring the diabetic warnings her body has given her and are able to get her the help she needs before she has to face tough police questioning.

Faith is beside herself with fear and anxiety over her missing mom and all too soon she realizes that whoever came for her mom is a threat to her teenage son and her infant daughter. How can she protect them when she can't figure out who the bad guys even are and what they have to do with her mother. In the meantime Agent Trent is working with their supervisor Amanda Wagner, the deputy director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to get to the bottom of the case and find Evelyn before she is killed. Amanda is a close personal friend of Evelyn and seems to be hiding information that Agent Trent knows would be helpful in solving the case, though it likely would smear Evelyn's reputation.

Agent Trent knows that Evelyn retired abruptly, as the men she worked closest with in the police department were brought up on charges of corruption and bribery, and in fact are currently incarcerated. If the assailants aren't after Evelyn's hidden stash of cash, what are they after?
Will very much doubts Evelyn's innocence, even in the face of Amanda's selective sharing of the emerging facts and Faith's steadfast belief in her mother's innocence. He believes Evelyn is either incompetent or guilty of the same crimes for which her team was found guilty, but at the same time he is working against all odds to find her before it's too late.

To complicate his life even further, he has developed a serious and growing interest in Dr. Linton in spite of the fact that he is part of a very dysfunctional marriage, and Dr. Linton is very attracted to him.

This book is fast paced and filled with twists and turns. While the good guys are far from perfect, the bad guys are chilling in their capacity for evil and cruelty. The book's ending is satisfying and leaves room for other novels featuring some of these folks again and again, and that is very good news.
(less)

like 1 like · see review

Sep 18, 2011 Kea rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Karin Slaughter's worst book thus far, I love her Grant County series, loved the characters and most of her storylines. However I am less than thrilled with her Will Trent series and this particular book is just plain ridicules on so many levels it begs belief. It was her slowest intro yet, found myself tempted to just not read it, that's how slow it was. The main storyline falls flat as the reasoning behind all the hate, and violence is just not sufficient you don't became hateful because you w...more

like · see review

Aug 26, 2011 Sheila rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've read all of her books and this one does not disappoint. Gives us an ongoing story of Will Trent,(a dyslexic brilliant) FBI agent, his partner, Faith Mitchell and Sara Linton, physician. Faith is late arriving at her mothers because of a inservice training session. When she arrives to pick up her baby, she finds her locked in a shed, her mother, a retired police captain, head of a narcotics division, is nowhere in sight, but a bloody hand print is on the door. One man is lying dead on the fl...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 26, 2011 Jackie rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the 3rd novel in the Georgia Series, by Karin Slaughter. Her 1sr series Grant County were about Dr Sarah Linton, and her husband, police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. She then moved on to the 2 books about Will Trent, then the Georgia series in which the two previous series overlap. So I am pretty familiar with the main players when I start this book.

The book begins explosively, you are right there involved with the situation and holding your breath from the start, when Special Agent Faith Mit...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 07, 2011 Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Karin Slaughter is one of those authors who can make my heart race when she has a new book released. Years ago, I stumbled upon Triptych in my Library, and loved it so much, I immediately looked up all her other books and began to devour them one by one. I have only been disappointed in one of her books---and no, not the one where one of our favorite Grant County characters is knocked off. In fact, I thought that was a brilliant move on her part. Don't we all want a book with such intense plots...more

like · see review

Aug 07, 2011 Miles rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith’s new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother’s safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door.

Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intrude...more On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith’s new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother’s safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door.

Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood. She stumbles across two more intruders, and within minutes they too are shot dead. And when the Atlanta police force turns up, Faith has some difficult questions to answer. But she has some desperate questions of her own. What were the killers searching for? Ex-Atlanta police chief Evelyn Mitchell was once under investigation by Faith’s partner Will Trent. Is her mother directly involved this time, and where is she now?

With Faith suspended from duty, Will, together with the help of Dr Sara Linton, must piece together the fragments of a brutal and complicated case – and catch a deeply troubled and vicious murderer with only one thing on his mind. To keep on killing until the truth is finally revealed…

Georgia, for me, is synonymous with iced tea, the great Southern drawl, the Augusta Masters, Southern Belle’s and of course Peaches – it’s hard to imagine anything untoward happens in the great state – but it does and Karin Slaughter does her very best to tarnish Georgia’s idyllic reputation!

Fallen is the third title in the “Faith Mitchell Georgia Series” and follows Undone (Genesis in the UK) and Broken; it also serves as my introduction to author Karin Slaughter – and what an introduction it is!

Faith is frantic; she can’t quite understand why her mother isn’t answering her phone or emails. Running late and feeling tired and hungry, Faith allows her mind to wander and begins to worry for her daughter’s safety. It’s not like her mother not to pick up her phone and when she eventually arrives at the house it’s fairly obvious that something is amiss!

The opening is incredibly atmospheric and certainly sets the tone and pace for the entire book. Slaughter does a magnificent job of allowing the reader to get into Faith’s head in those precious opening minutes as she hurries back, phone in one hand, driving wheel in the other. The lack of food is starting to take its toll on the diabetic agent who has to resort to a furry stick of gum to continue on her way.

Full review on my blog:- http://www.milorambles.com/2011/07/07...(less)

like · see review

Aug 03, 2011 Nicola rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reason for Reading: Next in the series.

A refreshingly, page-turning, exiting thriller that this long time Slaughter fan has finally found worthy of five stars again. Slaughter's last several books have been in the 3 or 4 star range for me, good but just not up to Blindsighted and Kisscut, those first two explosive books. With Fallen, Slaughter is back in the seat with an exhilarating new thriller. Faith, Will's partner, is a major character in this book as her mother is kidnapped and she sets of...more

like · see review

Jul 29, 2011 Jaime rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, mystery, police_procedural

This book is the third of Karin Slaughter’s to combine her Grant County and Atlanta series characters. These combined books are my only exposure so far to Sara Linton, so I am not as familiar with her history as I am with Will, Faith, and Amanda.

This book focuses mainly on Faith, whose mother has been tortured and kidnapped for reasons she is not sure of. Both a witness and a victim, Faith is unable to officially participate in the investigation and it’s driving her crazy… almost literally, as s...more

like 2 likes · see review

Jul 24, 2011 Phloe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: killing-people-fun

Five stars since I'll admit I've been a Slaughter fan since I accidentally checked out "Triptych" from my local library a couple years ago. Like everyone says, it's pretty fast reading, but not in that John Grisham-slash-Dan Brown kind of way. Karin is amazingly awesome at knocking people off in very sordid and varied situations - believable? perhaps. Wonderfully, believability has nothing to do with the fact we hang onto every word regardless.

Trent. Sara. Angie. Faith...and Amanda. Oh Amanda -...more

like 1 like · see review

Jun 28, 2011 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is yet another tense thriller written by Karin Slaughter featuring Sarah Linton, Will Trent and Faith Mitchell. When Faith arrives at her mother's house late to pick up her daughter, Emma, after completing required GBI training, she finds a smear of blood on the door and her daughter hidden inside a shed. Fearing the worst, Faith enters the house only to find one man already dead and two others alive and armed. By the time back-up arrives all three men are dead and there is still no sign of...more

like 1 like · see review

Jun 26, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: female-author, mystery, police-fiction

FALLEN is the third book in the "Georgia" series that combined the characters from Slaughter's "Grant County" and "Atlanta" series. In addition to combining the series, Slaughter has combined all the best elements of her writing to create a captivating, exciting crime novel.

I've always been a fan of Sara Linton. While she's a smart, beautiful woman, she's also awkward and quirky. She can't cook and she loves dogs. There are so many details about her character that draw the dimensions of a real p...more

like 4 likes · see review

May 14, 2011 Bookmom rated it 4 of 5 stars

Faith, a veteran officer, is alarmed when reaching her mother’s home, to find evidence of foul play and calls for back up. But she disregards the orders to wait for the back up when it’s obvious that there’s someone moving around in the house and she fears for her mother’s life. In just minutes Faith becomes both a witness and a suspect when she’s forced to kill 2 of the perps in order to defend others.

I haven’t read any other books by this author and it was obvious from the start that this book...more Faith, a veteran officer, is alarmed when reaching her mother’s home, to find evidence of foul play and calls for back up. But she disregards the orders to wait for the back up when it’s obvious that there’s someone moving around in the house and she fears for her mother’s life. In just minutes Faith becomes both a witness and a suspect when she’s forced to kill 2 of the perps in order to defend others.

I haven’t read any other books by this author and it was obvious from the start that this book is part of an ongoing series. As a matter of fact the author has two series and brought these characters together in prior books. I believe reading any of the other books would have only increased my level of enjoyment in reading this story that was difficult to put down.

This story is told mainly from the points of view of Dr Sara Linton, a former coroner now emergency room doctor who is interested in Will. Will, an officer with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations who is partnered with Faith. And Faith, who finally sees the bigger picture on how having a child at such a young age affected members of her family. We also get one scene with the point of view from Evelyn, Faith’s mother, who is the kidnap victim and herself a retired police captain.

There’s a lot that takes place in this story. While Faith remains under surveillance, waiting for the kidnappers to contact her, she must do her best to protect her family and is willing to do anything to get her mother back. Will and their boss, Amanda who is a personal friend of Evelyn’s, are off trying to find answers through interviews with criminals that make the police fearful even though the police have jurisdiction over the crime and aren’t sharing a whole lot of information. Sara’s role in the story is two-fold. She uses her experience and contacts to feed information to Will and Amanda, but her interest in Will and the pursuit of that relationship is a larger role.

I very much enjoyed the unraveling story as we come to the surprising root cause of the crime. It’s not at all predictable. The characters whose point of view we followed obviously had more depth than the others, although many of them were interesting and I’d like to know more about them.

Read and reviewed for Library Thing
(less)

like 2 likes · see review

May 02, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arcs, mystery

Karin Slaughter just keeps getting better and better. In Fallen, she returns to the team of Will Trent and Faith Matthews - but now Sara Linton is more than wrapped up in the story as well. It's a nice departure from the Sara/Lena tension of earlier novels, especially as I find Lena just as unbearable as Sara does (although, kudos to Slaughter for creating a truly multi-faceted unlikeable character).

This time, a desperate crime has come knocking right at Faith's doorstep, and we can only sit and...more

like 2 likes · see review

Jul 09, 2011 Ellie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

I'm always excited by the latest instalment in Karin Slaughter's Georgia crime series and have been especially pleased that Sara and Will return in Fallen. When we first met Will, we knew that he'd been involved in investigating Faith's mother's narcotics squad and now we learn a little bit more about that time.

Faith returns late to her mother's home after attending a training session that runs over. She finds her baby daughter locked in the shed, signs of bloodshed in the kitchen and no sign of...more

like 1 like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (29)

More editions...

Videos About This Book

Add a comment

Genres

Mystery

105 users

Thriller

88 users

Mystery > Crime

79 users

Suspense

33 users

Thriller > Mystery Thriller

31 users

Romance

11 users

Adult

6 users

Mystery > Detective

5 users

Adult Fiction

5 users

Romance > Romantic Suspense

4 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter (born 1971), is a US author who debuted with her novel Blindsighted in 2001. It became an international success, made the Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001, and has been published in 23 countries.

Slaughter was born in a small southern Georgia community, and now resides in Atlanta. She is widely credited with first coining the term "investigoogling" in 2006.

More about Karin Slaughter...

Books by Karin Slaughter

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Fallen

2 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

title link	preview: Fallen
avg rating	preview: Fallen Goodreads rating: 4.19 (8005 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9635495-fallen?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333577695l/9635495.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9635495-fallen?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Fallen by Karin Slaughter[/url]

Fallen (Will Trent #5)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website