Fractured by Karin Slaughter

Fractured

Karin slaughter had written the book named fractured in year 2008. Within this review, the author would be briefly introduced, followed by a summary of the story. Then, the story would be further dissected and have its themes under the headlights, and last but not least, the critical discussion of the books.

Karin loves thriller, but would prefer restrict what she would “show” and reveal in her stories to her readers. According to her, it is the part of the story in which she doesn’t show that would instill the most imagination and touch the readers’ heart and emotion most ardently.

The story is about a young girl from a well-off family was murdered, another one, her best friend, is kidnapped. A dyslexic detective with the name  Will Trent, paired with a reluctant partner, Faith Mitchell, ordered by the lady boss with an iron fist, Amanda, were set on to investigate and find the kidnapped girl. Given the wealthy background of the kidnapped girl, the kidnapper was suspected to have conducted this act out of the greed for money, in which all the clues had proved quite the opposite. What detective Will and Faith found were an ugly side of human weakness and the horrible past of the kidnapper that had marred away many young women’s life. Although the young lady was retrieved alive from a near death experience in the end, but just like how the title of the story had suggested, she had been fractured so much, that she is no longer the original daughter that her mother had known and loved.

When Karin shaped the character of Will, Faith, and Amanda, she had done so with such exuberance of life that you could actually see them walking right out from the book, literally. With Will, you can feel his insecurity of his inability to read. The anger that Faith feels would kind of resonate within us when she realized she had to work with the man who had ruined her mother’s career, and also many other fellow colleagues who were involved in using money from the drug busts. Faith’s pain for having to “leisurely” inform guys who are interested in her that she has a son that is 18 years old when she is just in her 30s would be ours when we read through Karin’s storyline for her. We are also able to see how much Amanda, Will’s boss, is hated, is admired, and is respected with her abilities and her status, and how all these had played a crucial role in shaping the underlying base for the whole storyline. The intensity of the storyline is vibrated when all the people, everyone involved, are victims in their very own way. There is no one we could really point a finger and say, he/she is the bad guy, or the total good guy in the story. Will, Faith, and Amanda, even the family members of the kidnapped girl are all victims and heroes that are flawed by their own misdoings, misconceptions, and also of their past that are not always a piece of white paper.

However, that is just one major bad guy in the story, the main person who had planned and plotted it all without getting his hands dirty, literally, and this guy is in the position that had been able to cause many young lives permanent harm in ways that is beyond anybody’s imagination.  Will and Faith, with the moral support of Amanda, and fuel by the urge to get justice back, had intensely chased him down but yet was nearly unable to serve him to the justice due to the fact that he had hid his tracks so well, none of the acts could be linked back to him in material evidence. Ironically, Karin had served the justice at the end of the story on a silver platter that is beyond the expectation of anybody, and the underlying message of that piece of evidence is so stark a contrast for it is actually through the flaw of the kidnapper that only had this piece of evidence could exist. Should the kidnapper be a normal person without dyslexic problem, this piece of evidence would never exist.

It can be concluded that Karin had center this whole story around the problems of the orphans who had grew up under the charity organization and had never knew the norm of love and family in their life, and the problem with school system, alongside the questioning that how successful had the government kept the schools system safe (which, obviously is of high questionability from the storyline), and also about the values of a family, and how problematic had it become. In which by purely ignoring it and sweeping it under the carpet is not going to solve any problem, and in the process of waiting for it to be solved, would put more of the younger generation into danger. This is a book that had started with the centerpiece of a jigsaw puzzle, and until all the pieces had been revealed and linked together, one would not be able to put it down.

Review by: Danielle Chiok

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