Book review: We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter

I very much enjoyed We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter so was even happier when I discovered it’s actually labelled North Falls #1. Slaughter does such a great job developing the characters and their lives, so it makes complete sense not to waste fabulously rounded creations on just one book. In fact, part-way through the novel it felt a bit like I was really embedded in the lives of the Clifton family and community of North Falls as if we’d been hanging out for years. It meant I was somewhat surprised when just over a third of the way through I discovered the unfolding plot (where I was happily ensconced) had been in the past and we move forward twelve years into the present.

Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think.

Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?

We first meet Emmy when she’s a young cop struggling with a no-hoper husband and young child. She’s having a bad night when her best friend’s teenage step-daughter tries to talk to her, later regretting it when the girl goes missing along with a friend. Emmy’s friendship’s never repaired but she and her father have taken solace in the fact that they caught the killer. Until he’s released after a dozen years in jail when a new witness comes forward. He’s not out for long however before another girl disappears…

The strength of this novel is in its characters. Not just Emmy, her father (the police chief) and her son (who also becomes a police officer) but also her relatives and extended family. When she moves to the present Slaughter also introduces an FBI agent (Jude) who’s renowned for hunting child predators and she seems to take an unexpected interest in the latest disappearance, arriving in town to help find the missing teenager.

What I also enjoyed about this was the fact that we’ve got the investigation at one level—the methodical unpicking of clues and evidence—but also the psychological element, which is where Jude comes in and for the first time Emmy starts to worry she and her father got the original investigation wrong and they locked up the wrong man. It means Emmy and her team are forced to revisit the original murders. And then Slaughter takes it even further when Emmy has to consider that someone deliberately pointed the police in the wrong direction and is trying to do so again.

This was a great read. Tumultuous and page-turning and I cannot wait for the next instalment in this series. Slaughter ends it in an interestingly place for several of the characters and I’m looking forward to seeing where she takes it next.

We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter was published by Harper Collins.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers for review purposes.

**My only grumble here is that Emmy’s mother develops dementia and there a a couple of throw away lines about her as a result…. ‘being as good as dead’, for example – which I found a bit triggering as someone whose mother has alzheimers.