Karin Slaughter | Indelible (Grant County #4)

The Book: 

Indelible by Karin Slaughter
Published September 27, 2005 by HarperTorch
Date re-read: October 23, 2022

The Characters: 

Sara Linton, Grant County pediatrician and coroner

Jeffrey Tolliver, her ex-husband, chief of police

Lena Adams

Get it on Bookshop.org | Amazon


The Plot (from Goodreads):

An officer is shot point-blank in the Grant County police station and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver is wounded, setting off a terrifying hostage situation with medical examiner Sara Linton at the center. Working outside the station, Lena Adams, newly reinstated to the force, and Frank Wallace, Jeffrey’s second in command, must try to piece together who the shooter is and how to rescue their friends before Jeffrey dies. For the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey — with a vengeance.

Click here for book spoilers for Indelible
Book spoilers ahead–if you haven’t yet read Indelible, I suggest you turn back now.

This writeup contains spoilers for the earlier books in the series.

This is the first book in the series where Karin gives us two for the price of one: a present-day shooting at the police department, and a case in the past in Jeffrey’s hometown, the first time he brought Sara there. I’ll summarize the past first and then the present, since they’re connected, although in the story the scenes skip back and forth.

A few months after they started dating, Jeffrey invited Sara to a beach vacation in Florida with him. On their way, they stopped off in his hometown. Their first night there, they heard a scream and followed it to the house of Jeffrey’s childhood best friend, Robert. A man was dead in their bedroom, and Robert had been shot. When Sara and Jeffrey arrived on the scene they could tell something was off about Robert and his wife Jessie’s home invasion story.

Jeffrey takes Sara on a tour of his hometown and they get caught in a rainstorm. To hide from the rain, he brings her inside a cave that he and his friends would hang out in as friends. What do you know, they find a skeleton in there. It is determined that this is the body of Julia, a girl who had gone missing when Jeffrey was a teen, shortly after accusing Jeffrey and Robert of raping her. She had also recently given birth to her son Eric, who was being raised by her mother.

When holes are poked in Robert’s home invasion story, he admits that he caught Luke and Jessie having an affair, and that’s why he killed Luke. He also admits to killing Jessie when they were teens. It was obvious he was lying to protect someone.

The Twist:

Sara realizes that Jessie was the one who killed Luke. Robert and Luke were the ones having the affair. Jessie meant to kill Robert and missed. Robert ties Sara up and tries to skip town.

The police chief was the one who killed Julia. Eric was his child, which Sara realized due to Eric’s genetic blood disorder. Jeffrey challenged the chief and got him to confess, but then he shot himself right after Jeffrey left his office.

Present day: Eric and his (younger) uncle Sonny were the ones shooting up the Grant County police station. Eric was angry that Jeffrey never rescued him from the abuse of his grandmother, because he still believed that Jeffrey was his father. Jeffrey survived. Eric died, but Sonny was arrested.

We learned in the past that Jared, Nell’s son, was Jeffrey’s real son.

The Ending:

Lena thought at the beginning of Indelible that she might be pregnant with Ethan’s child. When she went to see him after the events at the police station, he punched her in the stomach and said that if she ever tried to abort his baby, he’d kill her. Lena called Hank to come help her.

Jeffrey and Sara are officially back together. 

Questions:

The timing of the shooting at Robert’s was odd to me. Sara had met them earlier in the day at Possum and Nell’s, where Jessie was loaded on alcohol and whatever else. Sara and Jeffrey retire to Jeffrey’s mom’s house, it’s late, and then Jessie decides to go visit her mom and go grocery shopping? I thought this all happened the same day, but the timing doesn’t add up.

The Review: 

This is the first book in the series where Karin gives us two for the price of one: a present-day shooting at the police department, and a case in the past in Jeffrey’s hometown, the first time he brought Sara there. The “past” timeline is one of my favorites, although the “present” timeline seems to wrap up a little too neatly to be realistic.

I’ll come back and write a more thorough review later–I just wanted to get the spoilers posted asap!


If you’re looking for a matching set of the Grant County books, most of them are included in this set, which I purchased recently and love!

Grant County books in order

Blightsighted
Kisscut
A Faint Cold Fear
Indelible
Faithless
Beyond Reach

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