The Kept Woman

Dale Harding, the murder victim at the center of bestseller Slaughter’s exciting if flawed sixth novel starring Will Trent and Dr. Sara Linton (after 2013’s Unseen), was a retired (and dirty) Atlanta cop. Harding’s body turns up in a nightclub belonging to a celebrity athlete who recently beat a rape charge in a case handled by Will, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent. A gun at the crime scene ties the whole mess to Angie Polaski, Will’s dangerously off-kilter wife, who frequently leaves him for long periods but always returns. Further complications follow after Sara, Will’s current girlfriend, who’s now a GBI medical examiner, tells him that Harding wasn’t the only one who suffered—and bled a lot—in the club. The case becomes almost too large for Slaughter to contain, which could explain her choice to rely on an awkward extended flashback sequence, but she mostly manages to wrangle this installment into an intense look at the nature of loss and control, and how love can taint both. [em]Five-city author tour. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Associates. (Sept.) [/em]