Pieces Of Her
Karin Slaughter
I have enjoyed Karin Slaughter for years. I first discovered her around about the same time I stumbled across Lee Child, so that’s another massive thank you to Manchester City Council’s public library system.
I started with her Grant County series, continued with her Will Trent series and kept on going as the two series merged. I’ve never been to that part of the US but Slaughter is a native of the state of Georgia and these books capture the good, the bad, the ugly and the quirky of that unique state. Slaughter’s unflinching, often brutal stories are nevertheless beautifully written and I find them a true pleasure.
Alongside her series, she also does a mean line in standalone thrillers, and Pieces Of Her is her 2018 entry (I am baffled as to how I missed its publication, but hey-ho, I got it for Christmas).
The story concerns Andrea, a meek, unfulfilled young woman living above her mother’s garage. The two women are in a coffee shop, when a gunman enters. What happens next stuns Andy and turns on its head everything she thought she knew about her mother.
Slaughter excels at writing richly-layered, flawed characters and pushing them to their extremes, and this book is no different. Even better are her complex, clever plots that really do keep you guessing.
For example, in this book, I was pretty convinced early on that I knew what the big twist would be. It was the only logical explanation. That’s fine; even if I’ve figured that out, I know that I am still going to enjoy a damn good ride.
But readers can be a fickle bunch – for everyone that feels somewhat smug that they have guessed the author’s intentions (yeah, that’d be me), there are those that get in a huff and write grumpy Amazon reviews claiming that the book is predictable, the author is running out of ideas etc etc.
So about 100 pages in, Slaughter had one of her characters voice my theory – and promptly shot it down. Emphatically. No room for deception by the character. Basically Slaughter is telling the reader directly that if you think that I have taken the easy way out and gone for the obvious explanation, you’re wrong.
Awesome, now we’re cooking!
And so for the rest of the book the reader finds themselves slowly unpicking the story as each clue is revealed, piece by piece. What puts Slaughter at the top of her game is her very clever manipulation of the reader. She is extremely good at giving you just enough information so that sometimes you feel that you are running a few pages ahead, feeling triumphant that you have foreseen what’s happening next. Then on other occasions pulls the carpet from under you, confounding your expectations. That’s a real skill.
So, like all of Karin Slaughter’s books, this one that I heartily recommend and I look forward to seeing what NetFlix do with it!
