Review: Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter (Century)

Atlanta, 1974, Kate Murphy, a cop, is about to experience her first day on the force. Murphy is nervous and for very good reasons.

Elsewhere, on the same day, seasoned cop Jimmy Lawson is on a run from hell. Slung over his shoulder is his partner, bleeding from a head wound. Lawson is covered in blood and fragments of bone.

Karin Slaughter’s powerful prose reaches into the reader’s gut and gives it a good twist. Her twists also extend to a plot which is never predictable and always knife- edge.

Apart from a cop killing on her first day, sure to ratchet up the tension in any cop station, Murphy also has to contend with fellow officers, all of whom seem to have it in for her. The men are chauvinistic, abusive shi**, while the few women, who have managed to stay the course, are rough, tough, crass and highly suspicious of this rookie.

This is Atlanta in the 1970s where racism and sexism are the order of the day. The way things are going, Murphy, a Jewish woman with a Christian surname, is not going to last many hours. But, with a cop killer out there, and a male police posse single mindedly exploring a line of investigation, completely wide of the mark, perhaps Murphy, and her unofficial mentor, Maggie Lawson, might have an idea worth pursuing.

My 1970s were lived in London and I can only say, thankfully, London’s also male dominated society (at the time), did not include rules such as those in place in Atlanta where, without a male co-signee, a woman could not, open a bank account, rent a home, get a loan for a car or a credit card! Crikey!

Slaughter’s violent exposé of the times, as the background to a complicated crime spree, is a page-turning gut-wrencher of note.