We Are All Guilty Here

Karin Slaughter’s We Are All Guilty Here marks the beginning of what promises to be another extraordinary series by one of the finest crime authors of our time. The setting this time is North Falls, the seat of Clifton County in Georgia, a small town where everyone seems to know everyone else and nothing is ever a secret.

But that illusion is shattered when two teenage girls are snatched by a predator on a Fourth of July evening. For Deputy Emmy Clifton, the case is extremely personal since one of the girls is her closest friend’s daughter, and Emmy feels guilty about not listening to her when she approached her a little while before she was taken. Battling an array of emotions, Emmy throws herself into the investigation along with her dad, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, and the entire department, aiming to bring the girls home alive or, at least, to provide closure to the distraught parents.

Fast forward twelve years, another teenage girl goes missing amidst circumstances disturbingly similar to the past abduction, and Emmy finds every fact she uncovered and every conclusion she made previously turned on its head. Meanwhile, Jude Archer, who has recently retired from the FBI as a criminal psychologist specializing in cases of missing children, arrives at North Falls purportedly to help Emmy with the investigation but seems to have more on her agenda. Facing many regrets, self-doubt, and the pain of bereavement, Emmy must accept the help of the stranger despite her misgivings if she has to have any chance of nabbing the predator and saving the child.

We Are All Guilty Here is yet again a taut, riveting thriller with fantastic characters and a complex plot. Slaughter’s supreme ability to vividly depict the mental state of her characters – be it the terror felt by the victims, the anguish of the mother who has lost her child, or the frustration of the investigators facing dead ends – shines through in every scene. Each of her characters is fleshed out well and feels utterly realistic. Switching dexterously between tender scenes and terrible violence, Slaughter keeps her audience wholly involved in her narrative. The town of North Falls and the Clifton family – including all the aunts and cousins, each with their own quirks – come alive in Slaughter’s evocative prose. The intensity of the painstaking police work, Emmy’s and other characters’ multiple regrets, and the mounting tension caused by the predator on the loose are tempered by moments of levity that never feel out of place.

Though a bit longer than the average novel – a norm for Slaughter, thankfully – the pace of We Are All Guilty Here is relentless, making it impossible to put the book down. There are several twists, a few of which are unguessable, and each one is as exciting as it is shocking. Slaughter, as always, does not shy away from describing the extremes of human depravity, and a few scenes in this novel can cause distress to those unaccustomed to her writing. For me, it was as gritty and absorbing as I expected a Karin Slaughter thriller to be, and I would recommend it to every reader who is already a fan or is yet to discover this exceptional author.

I am grateful to HarperCollins UK / HarperFiction for the digital galley of We Are All Guilty Here through NetGalley.