Member Review

Nobody does dark secrets and small towns like Karin Slaughter does; the intensity of that all-knowing, all-seeing eye and the ever present risk around the corner. Another thing that I do admire Karin Slaughter for is her ability to never rest on her laurels. Not content (and she would be perfectly entitled) to bring us the consistently high standard of her ongoing series each year, she again delivers something new and beyond what, for some, would be her comfort zone. I was soon swept up in the story of two missing girls in rural Georgia, because there was so much to learn about them and almost everyone in this tiny corner of the world they called home, but which they longed to escape.

In creating Emmy Clifton, Karin Slaughter has given us a strong lead character, one whose task is all the more challenging because with the investigation into the girls' disappearance, everyone is connected to either Emmy, or the girls, or both. There is a lot of violence in the revelations as the story progress but rather than gratuitous I found these elements to be all too revealing, giving way more to sadness and a degree of pathos I maybe wasn't expecting. The sense of claustrophobia of Small Town America is so well-coloured that I felt as if I was looking over shoulders at the action - no mean achievement but something Karin Slaughter excels at when she moves away from Atlanta and exposes the sadder, meaner side of rural America.

This is a big book and not one to to be taken lightly. Some serious themes from the backbone of the story but are in excellent, extremely sympathetic hands. After all, this is a thriller, and yes, it will keep you up if, like me, you need to read just one more chapter before bedtime.