82. Blonde Hair Blue Eyes by Karin Slaughter

listened on Audible, through Chirp
read by Kathleen Early
Unabridged audio (2:23)
2015 Cornerstone Digital
67 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 8/29/19
Goodreads rating: 3.44 - 8282 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting: 1991 Athens, Georgia

First line/s:   "The morning mist laced through the downtown streets, spiderwebbing tiny intricate patterns onto the sleeping bags lining the sidewalk outside the Georgia Theater."

My comments:  Oh my, this novella certainly packs a punch.  A pretty 19-year-old college freshman in Athens, Georgia, ponders the mysterious disappearances of other pretty young women.  I'm pretty sure this takes place in 1991, so the plight of women and rape and abduction is still either mostly ignored or spoken in hush-hush tones.  At least a lot more than currently.  I was pretty sure of the ending for quite while, but it still got to me. 

Goodreads synopsis:  A missing girl in the news reminds Julia Carroll of herself: nineteen, beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyes.
          Julia begins to dig deeper and plans an article for her college paper. She becomes gradually more obsessed with the case, never imagining how close she herself is to danger. 
from a reader: Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes is a short-story prequel to Karin Slaughter's September 2015 novel Pretty Girls. It is a brief look at Julia's life before she went missing. In my opinion, I don't feel that it is necessary for readers of  Pretty Girls to read this but it provided interesting insight into local crime at the time, Julia's character, some family dynamics, and of course her abduction. 

51. Criminal - Karin Slaughter

Will Trent #7 - but certainly a stand-alone
read (beautifully)  by Kathleen Early
2012, AudioGo
13 unabridged cds (15:35)
$29.95/ TPPL
448 pages
Goodreads rating:  4.22
My rating:  5

Setting:  1975 AND contemporary Atlanta, Ga
First impressions:  I listened to the audio version, which was read beautifully.  The plot switches between two periods, current day and the summer of 1975, same characters...more or less.  Really nicely crafted, delving not only into a series of murders of prostitutes in Atlanta, but the minds and thinking and attitudes between the perbitrator/s and the investigators.  The segregation/discrimination between females and blacks in the Atlanta police department in the mid-1970's is also an eyeopener!  Couldn't put it down.

Will Trent is beginning to discover some of the truth about his past, the past that has been kept hidden from him.  Will's a nice guy despite lots of baggage.  He's smart and has made the best in a world that gave him a pretty lousy start.  He was raised in an orphanage in the poorest part of Atlanta, went into the police force, and now works for the George Bureau of Investigation.  This is his backstory, a story he learns about in bits and pieces.  He has a not-yet-ex wife and a new girlfriend, a female boss and a female partner, a dog and a porsche. Nice twist at the end that you only get hints at throughout the book.  This is a good one!