Genesis

A naked woman gets hit by a car. She is severely wounded, not only from the crash but also from torture. When special agent Will Trent visits the site of the accident, he finds an underground torture chamber in the forest. And signs of a second victim, who is found dead a little bit later. Will and his Partner, Faith Mitchell, take over the investigation and are soon confronted with two other missing women...

My impression of Genesis is mixed: I liked the beginning, found the middle part too long-winded, and was disappointed by the confusing and illogical end. I also found it unrealistic that Will Trent has become a special agent as he is dyslexic and doesn't even know what "left" and "right" mean.

Quotes from the book

"She must have been awake when the rib was removed."

Her voice had the phlegmy rasp of a two-pack-an-hour smoker.

"Detective Fierro?" Will guessed. [...] "Call me Asshole, because that's what you're gonna be thinking about me the whole lonely way back to Atlanta."

"Two options." Fierro held up his pudgy fingers and counted them off for Will. "Leave on your own two feet or leave on your back."

He certainly had his own way of doing things, but Will Trent was the best cop Faith had ever worked with – even if he had the social skills of an awkward toddler.

A blind three-year-old would've been able to tell it was a cop car.

"I don't know what it is, but something about having a baby makes you think the stupidest names are beautiful. [...] I almost named Jeremy Fernando Romantico [...]."

"Agent Trent, this is Sam Lawson, professional asshole."

"You earn respect by giving it to others."

"Why is it that the more beautiful the woman, the more horrendous the crime?"

"I'm not sure about anything right now, except that whoever is doing this is no amateur. His DNA is everywhere, which means he probably doesn't have a criminal record he's worried about. We don't have any clues because he didn't leave any. He's good at this. He knows how to cover his tracks."

"We've never really had anything like this happen to us before", Judith Coldfield said, and Will wondered if she thought people routinely rammed their car into women who had been raped and tortured in an underground cavern.

"Stupid air bag hit me square in the chest. Safety device, they call it. Damn thing almost killed me."

You couldn't say you were one of the good guys if you did the same thing the bad guys did.

Serial killers, by definition, were good at their jobs. They knew they were going to murder. They knew who they were going to kill and exactly how they were going to do it. They had practiced their trade over and over again, perfecting their skills. They knew how to evade detection, to hide evidence or simply leave nothing at all. Finding them tended to be a matter of dumb luck on the part of law enforcement or complacency in the killer.

In most serial cases, years passed, and the only thing the police could do was wait for more bodies to show up, pray that happenstance brought the killers to justice.

"Tell me what you're not telling me."

As a child, she had wanted to be an architect, a dream that was derailed promptly at the age of fourteen when she had been kicked out of school for being pregnant. It was different now, of course, but back then, pregnant teenagers were expected to drop off the face of the earth, their names never mentioned again unless it was in reference to the boy who had knocked them up, and then they were only referred to as "that slut who nearly ruined his life by getting pregnant".

"I have yet to meet a woman who is happy with her weight."

Normal. They had used that word in the children's home to describe people not like them – people with families, people with lives, people whose parents didn't beat them or pimp them out or treat them like trash.

"People don't do stupid things without a logical explanation."

His nose was itching, which was a funny thing to bother him, considering the fact that he had a kitchen knife sticking out of his back.

"Put the knife down." - "What makes you think you can tell me what to do?" - "My boss is behind you with a gun pointed at your head."