After That Night

March 1, 2023

In After That Night, Slaughter returns with Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton (250,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 21, 2023
Bestseller Slaughter’s disappointing 11th entry featuring Georgia investigator Will Trent (after 2020’s The Silent Wife) traces the fallout from a sexual assault. Doctor Sara Linton (from Slaughter’s Grant County series) is working at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital when 19-year-old Dani Cooper is admitted with fatal injuries from a car accident. Sara also recognizes signs of rape, which Dani confirms with her dying breaths. Having been raped herself 15 years earlier, Sara vows to bring Dani’s assailant to justice. Three years later, Sara prepares to go on the stand in a case against Tommy McCallister, who’s been charged with Dani’s assault; meanwhile, Tommy’s parents, multimillionaire doctors Britt and Mac McCallister, pressure Dani’s family into accepting a settlement that will keep Tommy out of jail. Sara enlists Trent—her fiancé—and his investigative partner Faith Mitchell to dig up information about the McCallisters, and they stumble on a bombshell piece of information that may reframe Sara’s own assault. Slaughter is hardly in top form here: the repetitive, protracted plot hinges on too many coincidences and easy confessions. Fans will hope for a return to form the next time out. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Assoc.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
As their wedding approaches, a series of unsolved rapes forces the GBI's Dr. Sara Linton and Will Trent, last seen in The Silent Wife (2020), to confront their painful pasts. Three years ago, Sara treated a rape victim, Dani Cooper, who died from her injuries. Now Sara is testifying against Dani's rapist, who, in a stroke of bitter irony, is the golden child of her married medical internship rivals, Mac and Britt McAllister. When Britt spitefully alleges that the rape Sara survived during their internship is linked to Dani's attack, Sara's carefully suppressed trauma resurfaces. Could her rapist have had ties to her fellow interns? Britt clams up, so Sara, Will, and Will's longtime GBI partner, Faith, launch an off-the-books investigation. Before long, they've discovered disturbing connections between the tight-knit group of successful doctors and other sexual assaults, including the recent disappearance of an Atlanta college student. Will is determined to go undercover among Atlanta's elite, but to pull it off, he'll have to trust the aunt who abandoned him as a child. Slaughter develops a striking contrast between the rape ring's twisted pact and the unshakable bonds among Sara, Will, Faith, and their boss, Amanda, infusing the good-versus-evil showdown with gritty investigative detail. The final result is incongruously warm and very, very good.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Slaughter's fans will be avid for the latest in this best-selling series, while its costar, state investigator Will Trent, has inspired a show on ABC, further expanding Slaughter's already vast audience.

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Starred review from June 15, 2023
Another violent crime in Atlanta provokes another deep dive into the tormented past of Slaughter's regulars. Three years after Dani Cooper, 19, crashes into an ambulance, gets taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, mutters to pediatrician/medical examiner Sara Linton that she thinks she's been raped, and then dies, Thomas Michael McAllister IV is placed on trial for her assault. Since Sara's the only person who heard Dani's gasping recollection, she's the star witness, and she fully expects Douglas Fanning--the sharklike lawyer retained by pediatric surgeon Mac McAllister and his wife, Britt, to protect their well-sheltered son--to force her to testify about her own rape 15 years ago, which resulted in an ectopic pregnancy that ended any chance she might have had of bearing children. Fanning drills Sara unmercifully but doesn't bring up her history. Even more surprisingly, Britt McAllister, when Sara encounters her in the courthouse restroom, smugly informs her: "What happened to you. What happened to Dani. It's all connected." Indeed it is, and in order to work out the connections, Sara, who identified her rapist as janitor Jack Allen Wright, will have to work with her fiance, Will Trent, and his partner, Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to dig deeper. Their goal: to figure out which fellow medical student who attended a fateful mixer all those years ago--a group Sara's now come to think of as the Rape Club--was behind the assault on Dani and a potentially endless list of other victims. These horrors may seem too unspeakable to pin down to any one perpetrator. It's a signal achievement of Slaughter that the climactic revelations add still another layer of horror to her tale. A grueling, pitiless, yet compassionate anatomy of rape for readers who can take it.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2023

In her 11th Will Trent novel (following The Silent Wife), Slaughter skillfully weaves misogyny, wealth, violence, power, and control into a thrilling police procedural while poignantly addressing the lasting effects of trauma and the toll cases take on investigators. Emergency-room doctor Sara Linton's patient, raped and beaten, speaks her last words: "Stop him. Please stop him." Three years later, Sara, now a medical examiner at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, is testifying at the civil trial of the man believed to be responsible, when the mother of the defendant (a former colleague of Sara's) tells her that this case and Sara's sexual assault years earlier are connected. With a renewed commitment to justice for her late patient, the abduction of another woman, and the need to know how the assaults are connected, Sara, her fianc� Will Trent, and Will's partner Faith embark on an off-the-books investigation to stop a serial rapist. The case reveals a conspiracy of the rich and powerful intent on getting away with rape, forcing Sara, Will, and Faith to confront their pasts to move forward with the investigation and with their lives. VERDICT This title will appeal to fans of S.A. Cosby, Laura Lippman, and Stacey Abrams.--George Lichman

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