Karin Slaughter | Broken (Will Trent #4)

Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read Broken, I suggest you turn back now.

Frank is the interim police chief following Jeffrey’s death. Lena is a senior detective. Brad’s a detective now. Lena is dating Jared (Jeffrey’s son).

When Allison’s body is pulled from the lake, Lena, Brad, and Frank go to the victim’s house to investigate. They think they see Tommy, the landlord’s son, cleaning up bodily fluids in Allison’s house, so they give chase. Frank, drunk, shoots Lena in the hand, and Tommy stabs Brad with a letter opener in self-defense.

Tommy kills himself in custody with Lena’s pen. Sara acts on her vendetta against Lena and asks Amanda to send Will to investigate.

Frank threatens Lena into protecting him and hiding that he was drunk on the job, but Lena eventually goes to Will to take the blame for the botched investigation. He decides to use her help in the meantime.

Allison’s boyfriend Jason is found dead on the Grant Tech campus, exonerating Tommy. Lena is kidnapped by someone at the clinic, someone she knew.

Sara and Will put together that Tommy and Allison may have been part of a drug trial. They assume Hare was forcing a drug trial on kids for money. Tommy’s mood swings were likely an adverse reaction to the drug.

Darla Jackson, Tommy’s neighbor’s nurse, had kidnapped Lena. She was Frank’s daughter, which Lena had forgotten.

When Sara and Will went to the clinic to see if they could find information about the drug trial, they ran into Jared, who was looking for Lena at the police station. Sara found out that Jared and Lena were dating. Jared knew now that Jeffrey was his father. Jared and Will went into the clinic to look for Lena while Sara waited outside. She went down to the water and ran into Darla, and immediately knew what Darla was up to. It was almost 3am.

Darla admitted to Sara that Allison and Jason were blackmailing her over the drug trial. People kept dropping out, so Darla had convinced Jason to enter twice. When he got Allison and Tommy into it, they decided they wanted all the money. Darla was trying to frame Jason for Allison’s death.

Sara and Darla struggled and fell into the river. Darla hit her head on some rocks and died. Sara made it out of the river. Will and Jared found Lena.

Frank had had a heart attack. He knew that Darla was rigging the drug trial. She had asked him for money to pay off Allison and Jason. She was also scamming old people under her guise as a nurse.

The Ending:

Sara invited Will to spend Thanksgiving with her family, but just as he was about to say yes, Angie texted that her mother had finally died and that she needed Will.

Jared and Lena had met on the day of Jeffrey’s funeral. They were engaged in the epilogue. Lena accepted the job on the Macon police force. We didn’t learn much about Jeffrey’s death, but it’s implied that Ethan had ordered him to be killed. Lena feels responsible because she got Jeffrey mixed up with Ethan. She had also planted the evidence on Ethan that allowed Jeffrey to send him back to jail for a parole violation.