Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter

Title/Author: Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
Publisher/Date published: De Bezige Bij (the Busy Bee :) ), first published in 2001 by William Morrow/Harper Collins
How I got this book: I bought it
Why I read this book: it had been staring at me from my shelve for over a year and it fit rather nicely into the fall/winter challenge from the College Students group on Goodreads

Goodreads summary: "The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, the town's pediatrician and coroner, finds Sibyl Adams, a young college professor, dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the postmortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality starts to become clear.
Police chief Jeffrey Tolliver - Sara's ex-husband - is in charge of the investigation, and when a second victim is found, crucified, only a few days later, he has to face the fact that Sibyl's murder wasn't a single personal attack: They're dealing with a sadistic rapist turned killer who is terrorizing rural Grant County.
Jeffrey isn't alone in his search. Lena Adams - the county's sole female detective - wants to see justice done since her sister was the first victim. Sara, too, cannot escape the terror. A secret from her past could hold the key to finding the killer - unless he finds her first."

I almost never read thrillers, I used to read a lot when I was younger and for some reason I don't remember went off them. Maybe it's the fact that as a medical student I get to see enough icky stuff and don't need it in my books. Besides, murderers scare me.

This was a fast read, Slaughter writes very engaging and apart from the a 'seriously?' reaction at Sara being a pediatrician as well as the coroner (that doesn't happen in Holland, I don't know about the US, but here pediatricians work in a hospital and they most certainly don't have a job as a coroner on the side) it was a smooth read.

I was horrified at the sick mind of this murderer, it was just sick what he did to his victims! Especially the first one, that was just plain awful. But I appreciate Slaughter's storytelling in this, there's real creativity involved. The way she describes the community and the dysfunctional relationship between Sara and Jeffrey is wonderful. I was rooting for them to work it out, but maybe that happens in one of the sequels.

I did guess who the killer was way before it was revealed, but I don't know why I thought that, I'm for some reason annoyingly accurate at guessing this. It wasn't overly obvious or something.

Anyway, though I don't think I'll be starting to read a lot of thrillers again, I really enjoyed it. If you have a weak stomach, I wouldn't recommend reading this one.

My rating: 3.5 stars