Criminal A Novel

Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before—when Will’s father was imprisoned for murder—this was his home. . . .

Flash back nearly forty years. In the summer Will Trent was born, Amanda Wagner is going to college, making Sunday dinners for her father, taking her first steps in the boys’ club that is the Atlanta Police Department. One of her first cases is to investigate a brutal crime in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are the only ones who seem to care if an arrest is ever made.

Now the case that launched Amanda’s career has suddenly come back to life, intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage. And these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.

A masterpiece of character, atmosphere, and riveting suspense, Criminal is the most powerful and moving novel yet from one of our most gifted storytellers at work today.

Advance praise for Criminal

“Karin Slaughter’s best yet by far: All her signature strengths are amplified a hundredfold by the past explaining the present. Reading this book was like watching a great athlete having a career year.”—Lee Child

“Fascinating . . . Slaughter delivers another riveting, pulse-pounding crime novel.”—Booklist (starred review)

Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda's motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before — when Will's father was imprisoned for murder — this was his home. . .

Flash back nearly forty years. In the summer Will Trent was born, Amanda Wagner is going to college, making Sunday dinners for her father, taking her first steps in the boys' club that is the Atlanta Police Department. One of her first cases is to investigate a brutal crime in one of the city's worst neighborhoods. Amanda and her partner, Evelyn, are the only ones who seem to care if an arrest is ever made.

Now the case that launched Amanda's career has suddenly come back to life, intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will's birth and parentage. And these two dauntless investigators will each need to face down demons from the past if they are to prevent an even greater terror from being unleashed.

A masterpiece of character, atmosphere, and riveting suspense, Criminal is the most powerful and moving novel yet from one of our most gifted storytellers at work today.

2.    Do you believe that modern women still have to deal with the misogynist attitudes that Amanda and Evelyn faced?  Did the female detectives face worse abuse because they were in a traditionally “macho” profession, i.e. the police?

3.    In the end, Amanda and Evelyn are only able to find the killer because they have the help of other women working in both the police department and in other city agencies.  Have you ever felt like you were in a situation in which you needed to have a group of friends watching out for your interests? 

4.    Another theme that runs through this novel is the theme of parenthood.  Several of the major characters have a parent continuing to have an extremely large impact on their lives:  the young Amanda lives under the shadow of her famous cop father, whereas Will Trent in the present has to deal with his abandonment as a child.  Did you feel that the contrast between these two experiences was an effective one?

5.    Was Amanda right to hide the truth from Will about his past?  Should she have tried harder to be a direct presence for him throughout his life, even if she had been unable to legally adopt him?

6.    Another theme of this book is race.  We see in the scenes set in the past that African Americans were very much marginalized in the police department, and that efforts to change this were just beginning.  Do you believe that this change has been completed now, or that black people still suffer the same kinds of discrimination today that they had to face forty years ago?

7.    Why do you think Angie did what she did at the end of the novel?  How do you think this is going to affect Will’s feelings about her?

8.    During Lucy’s captivity, she thinks about the fact that kidnap victims sometimes come to identify with their captors.  Do you think that Kitty’s marriage to Hank was related to her own captivity?

9.We’ve seen two sides of Amanda, as a young and insecure girl and as an older, self-assured woman.  What do you think of her as a person?  What do you think about Will in the end, as opposed to the beginning?  How do you think the events of the present have affected his relationship with Sara?