Review: The Last Widow

The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Page Length: 464 Pages
Publication Date: 14 June 2019
Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: ARC via NetGalley
 
Stars:  5 out of 5
 
Link: AMAZON (UK)

 
ABOUT THE LAST WIDOW:
 
It begins with an abduction. The routine of a family shopping trip is shattered when Michelle Spivey is snatched as she leaves the mall with her young daughter. The police search for her, her partner pleads for her release, but in the end…they find nothing. It’s as if she disappeared into thin air.
 
A month later, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, medical examiner Sara Linton is at lunch with her boyfriend Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the serenity of the summer’s day is broken by the wail of sirens.
 
Sara and Will are trained to help in an emergency. Their jobs – their vocations – mean that they run towards a crisis, not away from it. But on this one terrible day that instinct betrays them both. Within hours the situation has spiralled out of control; Sara is taken prisoner; Will is forced undercover. And the fallout will lead them into the Appalachian mountains, to the terrible truth about what really happened to Michelle, and to a remote compound where a radical group has murder in mind…

My Review:

I love Karin Slaugter's writing. The Last Widow is a brilliant and compelling read from start to finish. I didn't realise that this was a Will Trent novel, so pleasantly surprised from the get go!
 
The prologue starts in a normal day in a department store, the interaction between mother and daughter. The end of which leaves everything to the imagination "Ashley had run off, just like they had taught her to do. Which was fine, because the man did not want Ashley. He wanted Michelle."
 
Ms Slaughter writes in such a way it's impossible not to feel there with the characters. To feel their pain, their anguish and the dialogue is sharp and the description at times visceral.
When Sara gets taken at gunpoint, Will is left injured and determined to find her. The time is ticking, but bureaucracy and competing law enforcement bodies competing for jurisdiction.
 
With Will chasing after a home-grown terrorist group, there are timely comparisons to Charlottesville.
 
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
 
Thank you so much the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary electronic copy in return for an honest review.