Karin Slaughter is just as good as everyone says. This was my first of her books and I'm hooked. I can imagine that she will very quickly become an author I regularly buy and get from the library. I already own the second in the Will Trent series and I'm itching to pick it up, which I'll probably do as soon as I finish writing this review.

To start with a quick warning, this is a dark, gritty book. From what I've heard of Karin Slaughter, that's not uncommon, but I read a lot of thrillers and she's definitely grittier than the norm for the genre. She goes out of her way to make the reader feel uncomfortable with slurs and prejudice and graphic descriptions of violence, in particular sexual violence. I actually enjoyed that, but I know it's not for everyone.

This book had me entranced from the beginning. I think I was fifty pages in before I even looked up once. The story was well told and the characters were so three dimensional, in all the worst and best ways. She's fantastic at writing from the perspective of characters who are terrible human beings, some in big "evil" ways and others who are just run of the mill bullies. I loved it.

This book also got me with the most unexpected plot twist I've read in years. I don't get got easy on plot twists. For the most part, I find them rather predictable and I'm okay with that. This actually made me angry by how much it came out of left field. I spent about thirty minutes rereading just to see what I had missed. It was fantastic.

I think in terms of flaws, the main detective was a big one for me. I didn't like Will Trent, who is the lead for this who series. It wasn't that I disliked him, I was just kind of disinterested. Part of that is definitely because he didn't become important until about halfway through the book, but even then I couldn't bring myself to be invested in his backstory. I'm hoping that will change as the series goes along because while liking the main detective isn't necessary for procedural cop books, it's definitely a plus.

I was also not the biggest fan of the last third of the book. At a point, you figure out the whodunit aspect and the book becomes suspenseful in terms of how he's going to get caught and what the ending will be. Which is fine, but it felt like I eventually realized how the book had to end and was kind of just waiting for it to get there. It wasn't bad, but it did drag a bit because of that and I think it could have been a bit shorter.

I think the structure of the book was both good and bad for me. The title "Triptych" refers to the three parts the story is told in, Michael's, then John's, then Will's. They obviously go together and overlap, but they're told out of order with missing information. I liked that, but it was also a bit irritating to get super invested in one character and their story, and then to switch to someone new and not even mention that first character for a hundred pages. I'm just a very linear person and while she did it well, I do prefer a single consistent story line.

But all in all, this is probably the best procedural cop thriller and I've ever read and honestly makes it to my favorite thrillers of all time. I briefly considered giving it a full five stars, which I've so far never done for any thriller. I'm so excited to continue on in the series and then read other Karin Slaughter books as well. If the rest of her work is anything like this, I've found a new favorite author.