Will Trent Books in Order: How to read the Karin Slaughter’s series?

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Written by American crime novelist Karin Slaughter, The Will Trent series takes place in Atlanta and features GBI special agent Will Trent, his partner Faith Mitchell, and Angie Polaski–later, Sara Linton from The Grant County Series (also by Karin Slaughter, of course) joins the series.

A good agent who has a reputation for not getting along well with others, Will Trent joined the Special Criminal Apprehension Team, a new unit headed by Amanda Wagner. With his phenomenal clearance rate, Will is one of the best agents in the bureau–in spite of his dyslexia.

How to read the Will Trent Series in Order?

Each novel in the Will Trent book series offers a complete mission, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one book to the other. It’s better to read them in order.

  1. Triptych – From Atlanta’s wealthiest suburbs to its stark inner-city housing projects, a killer has crossed the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries, too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective. But when it becomes clear that it’s just the latest in a series of similar attacks, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are called in, and Ormewood is forced into working with Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Apprehension Team.
  2. Fractured – With its gracious homes and tree-lined streets, Ansley Park is one of Atlanta’s most desirable neighborhoods. But in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager’s lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her horrified mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter’s attacker with her bare hands. Detective Will Trent s here only to do a political favor. But Trent soon sees something that the cops are missing…
  3. Undone – In the backwoods of suburban Atlanta, where Sara’s patient was found, local police have set up their investigation. But Will Trent doesn’t wait for the go-ahead from his boss-he plunges through police lines, through the brooding woods, and single-handedly exposes a hidden house of horror buried beneath the earth. Then he finds another victim…
  1. Broken – When Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him or her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. While the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she’s already about to crack.
  2. Fallen – Faith Mitchell’s mother isn’t answering her phone. There’s a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. Faith charges into her mother’s house, gun drawn. She sees a man dead in the laundry room. She sees a hostage situation in the bedroom. What she doesn’t see is her mother… To find her mother, she’ll need the help of her partner, Will Trent, and they’ll both need the help of trauma doctor Sara Linton.
  3. Snatched (short story) – While in a restroom at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Will Trent overhears a girl’s pleading, plaintive voice: “Please, I wanna go home.” Something isn’t right here, thinks Will. He feels it in his gut. But he waits too long to act, and now the girl and the anxious, angry man she’s with have disappeared into the crowds at the busiest passenger airport in the world.
  4. Criminal – Newly in love, Will Trent is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will cannot fathom Amanda’s motivation until the two of them literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons.
  5. Busted (short story) – Detective Will Trent is standing in a Georgia convenience store, waiting on an obstinate ICEE frozen-drink machine. Everything changes in one horrific instant, as all hell breaks loose at the Lil’ Dixie. A cop is shot. A bag of cash goes flying across the floor. A young woman disappears while a killer takes off in a battered pickup truck. Within seconds, Will is in pursuit.
  1. Unseen – Will Trent is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent whose latest case has him posing as Bill Black, a scary ex-con who rides a motorcycle around Macon, Georgia, and trails an air of violence wherever he goes. The cover has worked and he has caught the eye of a wiry little drug dealer who thinks he might be a useful ally. But undercover and cut off from the support of the woman he loves, Sara Linton, Will finds his demons catching up with him.
  2. The Kept Woman – With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop. Studying the body, Sara Linton realizes that the extensive blood loss didn’t belong to the corpse. Bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim-a woman-who has vanished…
  3. The Last Widow – One of Atlanta’s busiest and most important neighborhood’s has been bombed. Sara Linton and her partner Will Trent rush to the scene-and into the heart of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy thousands of innocent lives. When the assailants abduct Sara, Will goes undercover to save her and prevent a massacre-putting his own life on the line for the woman and the country he loves.
  1. The Silent Wife – Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect. The man insists that he was framed by a corrupt law enforcement team led by Jeffrey Tolliver and that the real culprit is still out there-a serial killer who has systematically been preying on women across the state for years.
  2. After That Night – Fifteen years ago, Sara Linton’s life changed forever when a celebratory night out ended in a violent attack that tore her world apart. Since then, Sara has remade her life. A successful doctor, engaged to a man she loves, she has finally managed to leave the past behind her. Until one evening, on call in the ER, everything changes. Sara battles to save a broken young woman who’s been brutally attacked. But as the investigation progresses, led by GBI Special Agent Will Trent, it becomes clear that Dani Cooper’s assault is uncannily linked to Sara’s. And the past isn’t going to stay buried forever . . .

If you like our article about reading the Will Trent books in order, don’t forget to bookmark it! You may also be interested in Alex Delaware, Eve Dallas, the Lincoln Lawyer

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