Blindsighted (2001), is an award winning New York Times and Times bestseller psychological thriller novel, by author Karin Slaughter. It is the first of the Grant County, Georgia Series of books. It became an instant international success and was published in 23 different countries.
It introduces the characters of Sara Linton and her former husband Jeffrey Tolliver. Sara is a pediatrician and medical examiner, whilst Jeffrey is the local police chief. A local blind resident is found brutally assaulted before she dies by Sara. But is this just a one-off crime...
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Blindsighted takes place over the seven days following Easter Sunday. Sara Linton serves double duty as pediatrician and coroner in the small Georgia town of Heartsdale. The latter continually brings her into contact with police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, who just happened to be her husband until they were divorced two years earlier after she caught him with another woman. Though Sara's loathe to admit it she still has feelings for Jeffrey, and he's still in love with her. During a late lunch with her sister Tessa at the diner she's been eating in all her life, Sara goes to wash her hands and discovers Sibyl Adams, a blind professor at the local college, bleeding profusely in a toilet stall after being viciously attacked. Sara tries her best to save her but Sibyl dies. She was the twin sister of Lena Adams, Jeffrey's best detective, who has an antagonistic relationship with Sara and is hotheaded and prickly on her best days. The initial evidence indicates a ritualistic murderer who will continue to kill, and the autopsy uncovers shocking depravity and bizarre technique. As they race against time Sara also has to deal with a young patient named Jimmy Powell who's been diagnosed with leukemia, and ominous postcards connected to a horrendous event from her time in residency, while Lena tries to stay on the rails as she shoulders the crushing grief and guilt the death of her sister brought. There are more attacks and clue-revealing autopsies, racism rears its ugly head and claims a victim, and a chapter in Sara's past that is still being written converges in a finale that leaves Lena unalterably scarred for life in more ways than one.
"Wildly readable...Slaughter's plotting is brilliant, her suspense relentless." Washington Post
Chosen by the WaPo and the Florida Sun-Sentinel as one of the best books of the year.
A People magazine "pick-of-the-week"
Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first Crime Novel.
Amazon page on Blindsighted
Library Thing
Official Karin Slaughter webpage on Blindsighted