| |
1 |
Cop Town: A Novel
Author:
Slaughter, Karin
|
| |
|
Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
|
LC: PS3569.L
Print Run: 400000
|
|
ISBN-13: 9780345547491
LCCN: 2014005076
Imprint: Delacorte Press
|
|
Pub Date: 06/24/2014
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $27.00
|
| |
Hardcover
|
|
|
Physical Description:
|
402 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.55",
W 6.44",
D 1.27",
1.42 lbs.
|
|
LC Series:
|
|
|
Brodart Sources:
|
Brodart's Blockbuster List
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
|
|
Bibliographies:
|
Booklist's Mystery Showcase
Fiction Core Collection, 20th ed.
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Fiction
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
|
|
Awards:
|
Booklist Starred Reviews
Library Journal Starred Reviews
|
|
Starred Reviews:
|
Booklist
Library Journal
|
|
TIPS Subjects:
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
|
BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural
|
|
LC Subjects:
|
Atlanta (Ga.), Fiction
FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural
Georgia, History, 20th century, Fiction
Georgia, History, Fiction
Murder, Investigation, Fiction
Mystery fiction
Policewomen, Fiction
Policewomen, Georgia, Atlanta, Fiction
Suspense fiction
|
|
SEARS Subjects: |
Adventure fiction
Criminal investigation, Fiction
Homicide, Fiction
Mystery fiction
Policewomen, Fiction
|
|
Reading Programs: |
|
|
|
| |
| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 01/01/2014 |
| Never send a man to do a woman's job. Partnered with a fellow female police officer shortly after joining the Atlanta Police Department as one of its few women in 1974, Kate Murphy finds herself knee-deep in a hot case after the department pairs her up with Maggie Lawson in a failed attempt to keep the women out of the line of fire. 384pp., 400K, Auth res: Atlanta, GA |
|
| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 05/01/2014 |
| In her first stand-alone novel, Slaughter revisits the themes of her best-selling 1970s-set Criminal (2012). In Atlanta in 1974, Kate Murphy shows up for her first day of work at the Atlanta Police Department. Brought up in the genteel section of town, the daughter of a wealthy psychiatrist, Kate is wholly unprepared for the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of a department that is openly hostile to women. Sporting a uniform three sizes too big, she is a ready target for her fellow cops' emotional and physical hazing. She partners with Maggie Lawson, who has a brother and an uncle on the force, and the two are thrown headlong into a day that sees them dealing with the murder of a fellow police officer. They begin to suspect that the dead cop was the victim of the Shooter, an expert marksman who has already taken out four other officers. Frantically looking for the thread that connects the murders, conducting a harrowing interrogation of a transsexual pimp that erupts in violence, and emotionally bruised from the vitriol directed her way, Kate begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a cop. Slaughter graphically exposes the rampant racism, homophobia, and misogyny of cop culture in the 1970s, made all the more jarring by its contrast with Kate's cultured upbringing. Winning leads, the retro setting, and a riveting plot make this one of Slaughter's best.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Slaughter has more than 30 million copies of her books in print in 32 languages; the first stand-alone novel by this exceptional crime writer is sure to win her many new fans. Wilkinson, Joanne. 384p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
|
| Library Journal | 06/15/2014 |
| Gender politics and race relations are front and center in this explosive thriller. It's 1974 Atlanta, and another policeman has been shot by the man they're calling the Shooter, yet his partner, Jimmy Lawson, is left physically unharmed but devastated. Jimmy's sister Maggie, also a cop, is convinced that something is off about Jimmy's version of events, but getting anyone to listen to her suspicions would only prove futile. After all, women weren't very welcome on the police force in 1974 and they certainly didn't investigate serious crimes. When she's partnered with Kate Murphy, whose pampered background couldn't be more different from Maggie's solid blue-collar roots, events begin to escalate, and Kate and Maggie must put everything on the line to stop a ferocious killer. VERDICT Slaughter's first stand-alone thriller is a superb, very gritty look at both a city and era in social and political flux. It's also a searing portrait of family ties and how our pasts can shape our futures, as well as a gripping procedural, with some genuinely terrifying moments. Kate and Maggie are wonderful creations, and this title is sure to win over readers new to Slaughter's work while reminding old fans of her enormous talent. [See Prepub Alert, 1/6/14; Slaughter Q&A, LJ 4/15/14, p. 24.--Ed.]. Kristin Centorcelli, Denton, TX. 384p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
|
| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 07/01/2014 |
| In a meteoric career that has produced two series and 13 crime novels in as many years, Georgia native Karin Slaughter rocketed to international bestseller status by granting women their rightful place at murder scenes and morgues. Yet while her growing fan base eagerly awaits each new installment of her Atlanta series featuring Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Will Trent (Triptych, Fractured, Broken) and its country cousin starring Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton (Faithless, Indelible, Blindsighted), the restless Slaughter has kept busy crafting her new novel, exploring time travel--and bracing herself for space flight. What!? Time travel? Space flight? Whose genre is this, anyway? Slaughter admits her unquenchable thirst to break new ground has prompted a mid-career interest in exploring neighboring galaxies, literary and otherwise. How did a small-town Southern girl wind up doing weightless somersaults aboard the infamous suborbital "vomit comet," much less set her sights on a future space flight aboard the Virgin Galactic? More about that later, though in a way, the process accelerated with Cop Town, her first standalone novel, which takes place back in mid-1970s Atlanta when cops were men and women weren't welcome. Slaughter first wrote about the period in Criminal (2012), in which she united characters from her two series. "I had so much fun that I wanted to visit that time period again," she explains. Just one problem: "I couldn't come up with a good reason to put my characters Will and Sara back there, mainly because they would have been children then," she says. Slaughter herself was only 3 years old at the time. So she created two very different protagonists: veteran patrolwoman Maggie Lawson, whose brother and uncle are part of the all-male good-ol'-boy network on the Atlanta force, and her new rookie partner Kate Murphy, a Jewish neophyte from a privileged background whose husband was killed in Vietnam. Together, they battle the blatant racism, sexism and cultural ostracism of the day, while working their way into the search for a serial killer who is targeting their ranks. Slaughter called upon the best possible resource to bring her characters to life. "I talked to six female police officers who are now retired and in their 60s. If you want to get the truth about something, talk to a 60-year-old retired woman!" she chuckles. "I thought it would be really interesting to explore the lives of patrol officers, because that's something I haven't really done before; normally, they're detectives. And because there was so little structure to Atlanta policing at the time, a lot of patrol officers did detective work. Sometimes they had to, because the detectives were passed out drunk in their cars. Honestly, that was a real problem!" To prepare for her immersion into the disco era, Slaughter chose her bedside reading accordingly. "One of the books I was reading while working on Cop Town was Fear of Flying by Erica Jong," she says. "Reading it now, this line stuck out to me: 'An unmarried woman is taking a vow of poverty.' And for a lot of women today, that's true. When you combine households and you have someone--a spouse or partner--it makes things easier. If you look at the number of single mothers who are trapped in poverty, it really resonated for me." So did the changes America was facing back then. "It definitely mirrors what we're going through today: coming out of a very disastrous war, the economy was in the toilet, women's pay equality, homophobia, racism. It's easier to talk about these things in the past, because if you talk about them in the present, then you're kind of a whiny bitch. But if you say, hey, look how bad it was in the '70s,... Review exceeds allowable length. Jay MacDonald. 416p. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
|
| Kirkus Reviews | 05/01/2014 |
| A gritty procedural in which the streets of 1970s Atlanta are just as dangerous for cops as for criminals.Being a woman in uniform is hard enough, but thriller-writer Slaughter (Unseen, 2013, etc.) drives the point home like a knife to the eye--she does that, too--with her taut stand-alone featuring two female cops in a city bubbling over with racial and political unrest. Maggie Lawson bleeds blue--older brother Jimmy is in uniform and uncle Terry is top brass--but she's not welcome in the male-dominated police world. Besides the racial clashes erupting on the street and within the department, there's a cop killer on the loose. Known as the Shooter, he ambushes officers and executes them. As a woman whose duties involve writing tickets and generally keeping out of the way--despite the fact she has five years' experience under her heavy utility belt--Maggie can only stay peripherally involved in the manhunt, even when Jimmy's partner is killed. Officially, that is. Joined by rookie Kate Murphy, a woman trying to leave everything, from her upper-class upbringing to her dead husband, behind, the pair conducts their own investigation. Slaughter excels at empathetically flawed characters who rise above the violence--her books are not for the squeamish--of their circumstances; Maggie and Kate are on par with series regulars Will Trent and Sara Linton.There's nothing pretty about this divided cop town, but in exposing its ugliness, Slaughter forces us to question whether times really have changed. 384pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
|
| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 01/06/2014 |
| In 1974 Atlanta, Kate Murphy is already floundering on her first day on the police force, and things gets worse when she's partnered with angry Maggie Lawson, a move meant to sideline both of them that has the opposite effect. Optioned by Warner Horizon for a TV series, with Slaughter cowriting the pilot. 384p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
|
| Publishers Weekly | 04/14/2014 |
| Violent crime, police politics, and race relations all figure in this scintillating standalone set in 1970s Atlanta, from bestseller Slaughter (Martin Misunderstood). Maggie Lawson comes from a disjointed, emotionally disconnected family of law enforcement officers, and her time spent as an Atlanta PD cop has hardened her to many of the job's horrors. But when her brother, Jimmy, who's also a police officer, loses his partner to a notorious and elusive cop killer--only surviving the ordeal himself because the assassin's handgun jammed--Maggie decides she can't write this murder off as yet another day on the job. Determined to track down "the Shooter," she finds an unlikely partner in Kate Murphy, a stunningly beautiful widow and new recruit reassigned to Maggie's patrol. While the two women search for answers, Kate becomes the next potential victim in the demented Shooter's crosshairs. Slaughter does her usual fine job of exploring intriguingly troubled characters, though readers should be prepared for plenty of gore. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Associates. (June). 384p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
|
9780345547491,dl.it[0].title
|
|