Karin Slaughter writes tough, vigorous prose, and has the characters and plots to match. Fractured features Will Trent, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, a former foster child with emotional scar tissue that helps him read people quickly. His people skills are vital because Trent is also a severe dyslexic who has kept his inability to read secret for most of his life.

When he is called to the palatial home where a teenaged girl has been kidnapped and two other people killed, it doesn't take Trent long to realize that the local police have messed up the crime scene and are already going in the wrong direction. It's hard to get people to listen, though, because he was part of a team investigating corruption in the ranks some time ago, and now is paired with a detective whose mother was one of the people implicated by Trent's earlier work. Faith Mitchell is a good cop, but she also has a good memory.

Trent and Faith manage to establish a working relationship and find several different threads that may or may not connect, and the case becomes a fascinating character study of several emotionally "fractured" characters, some of whom still manage to function. Trent's own disabilities help him read the crime scene and understand the criminals in ways "normal" people couldn't, and it's both a blessing and a curse.

Slaughter has crafted a complex page-turner here with deeply wrought characters.