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Criminal
624 pages
A sweltering, dread-soaked descent into the darkest corners of a detective's buried past.
What it feels like
Reading this thriller feels like walking through the sweltering, oppressive heat of an Atlanta summer, where the air is thick with tension and long-buried secrets. The narrative is relentlessly propulsive, pulling you back and forth across decades to unravel a deeply personal, dread-soaked mystery. It is an unflinching experience that refuses to look away from the brutal realities of violence, systemic corruption, and the lingering scars of childhood trauma. Yet, beneath the gritty procedural details lies a profound empathy for its broken characters. The prose is sharp and visceral, grounding the high-stakes suspense in raw psychological truth. It is a perfect match for readers who crave dark, atmospheric crime fiction that leaves a lasting emotional bruise.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- oppressive
- tense
- sweltering
- Tone
- unflinching
- gritty
- empathetic
- suspenseful
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- generational trauma · the inescapable past · systemic corruption · surviving childhood abuse · institutional misogyny
- The writing
- Visceral and sharp, the writing balances brutal procedural realism with deep, empathetic dives into character psychology.
- The arc
- The narrative plunges from a state of creeping, suppressed dread into a harrowing confrontation with buried trauma, culminating in a bruised but hard-won catharsis.
- Who it's for
- Fans of dark, character-driven police procedurals who appreciate a heavy dose of psychological grit and historical atmosphere.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- child abuse
- sexual assault
- misogyny
- racism
About the book
"1974: in the blistering heat of an Atlanta summer, a killer prowls the streets, searching for the weak, the vulnerable and the lost. Forty years later, a young woman is found brutally murdered in a sordid high-rise apartment. The specifics of her death are detailed and macabre, but for Special Agent Will Trent they are startingly familiar, and can only mean one thing. Desperate to deny this might be happening to him, he is forced to return to the home he grew up in, to the grimy crime-ridden streets, to a childhood he has spent the best part of his adult life trying to avoid. As the body count rises, and the tension on the inner-city streets starts to simmer, Will becomes convinced that the clue to the killings now, and in 1974, may lie in his own past; a past that he hates yet feels responsible for."--Back cover.
Description from Open Library.
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