Triptych carries the weight. It’s big and messy, in a good way. And yes, it’s a bit warped. You don’t feel like the story is in the hands of the writer, it’s in the hands of the characters and their very real, terribly tangible situation. This is not writing for flash, this is writing for story and the story is all character. Tangled? Quite a bit. Triptych feels shaggy, unkempt and free-flowing. Slaughter delivers a sense that are events are out of control, not being guided by her. There are no buried sonnets here, just story-telling.
There are plenty of good examples of cross-gender writers but certainly Karin Slaughter would be Exhibit No. 1, although here she has multiple points of view, both male and female, in this story involving murdered prostitutes, stolen identities, severed (bitten off) tongues, infidelity and personal entanglements.
The overall flavor is raw, in case that’s not already apparent. Without her name on the jacket, I think most readers would guess the author was male—and that’s a good thing.