Reviews - Cop Town | The StoryGraph

625 reviews for:

Cop Town

Karin Slaughter

3.78 AVERAGE

himpersonal's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It was good, but I think I love the Will Trent series so much that I can’t help but compare this book to those. Will say book kept getting better as it progressed. Hoping this one gets spun off into its own series.

Content Warnings

susysstories's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Quite a depressing read with highly unlikeable characters, which portrays the society of the 70's with heavy topics like discrimination, homophobia and women's oppression. It could easily have been 100-150 pages shorter though. And the fast character development was a bit unrealistic imo.

Characters 7
Atmosphere 7
Writing Style 7
Premise 6
Execution/Plot 6
Execution/Pace 6
Execution/Setup 6
Enjoyment/Engrossment 6
Narration 5

kcswallen's review against another edition

4.0

informative mysterious tense medium-paced

jbrannan1158's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

jillread's review against another edition

3.5

dark tense fast-paced

billymac1962's review against another edition

4.0

Karin Slaughter has been on my radar ever since I heard of Pretty Girls. A year ago last Christmas, my mother gave me a hardcover copy (first edition signed copy, no less. Thanks, Mom!) Cop Town, and this caused a dilemma with me. I felt some obligation to read this as it kept staring at me, even though I had really planned on Pretty Girls being my first read by her.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, my wife read and loved The Good Daughter. So it came to pass that push came to shove and I had to get the monkey called Cop Town off my back. It was quite good.

The main focus of this story is Atlanta, 1974 and the discrimination that two women cops are up against. Atlanta is under a significant culture change, with a black mayor, black police commissioner, and the good old white boys of the force hanging on to what is theirs: white, Christian, straight men power.

And someone is assassinating cops.

Slaughter has quite a mix going here. She could have kept things formulaic and set the focus on the hunt for the killer, but she has all of this to the beat of this social dynamic. It works extremely well.

So there. I've read her, I like her. And now I can place Pretty Girls or The Good Daughter on my immediate radar without this girl on the cover making me feel guilty. No regrets; it was good stuff. 4 solid stars.