The Secrets We Hide

When I open a Karin Slaughter book, I know it’s going to be dark, sometimes overly so. (There’s only so much brutal torture of women I can take and, in several of her books, she’s crossed that line, which, by the way, doesn’t mean I quit reading them. Her books are literary crack.) One of the many reasons I love the first book in her North Falls series, We Are All Guilty Here, is that it has all the craft she’s famous for and less of the horror I could do without. The same is true of this sequel.

In the prologue of The Secrets We Hide, Allison Vickery, who just moments before finished packing so that she and her daughter could skip town and finally be safe, is shot dead in her kitchen with her own gun, wielded, we’re told, by someone she loved.

At the same time, acting Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister Jude Archer—a retired FBI agent—have just left their mother’s funeral. It would be an understatement to say that all three women had issues with one another. (If you really want this book to make sense, please, if you haven’t already, go read We Are All Guilty Here.) As Emmy, Jude, and Emmy’s son Cole—he works for the Sheriff’s Department under his mom—drive home, they hear the unmistakable sound of gunfire. They figure out which house it’s coming from and rush in. Allison is dead, and her daughter Mandy is alive, although just barely.

Allison was an ex-cop, a friend of Emmy’s, and a woman who, again and again, picked men from the bottom of the barrel. Who killed her? Her husband—known for his temper—the man Emmy thinks Allison must have been planning to leave? Her ex-lover, a man with serious anger-management issues? Someone else entirely?

And why?

The why is why Slaughter’s twisty, smart thrillers sell like the latest fly Nike drop. Clifton County—Emmy’s family founded it—is full of secrets, many of them deadly. The suspect list grows as Emmy very reluctantly works the case with Jude and Cole, and everything gets more and more convoluted. The past is key here, and the deeper Emmy and Jude dig into it, the more danger they themselves are in. Twist fans will find plenty to savor.

But as gripping as the case is, this novel belongs to Emmy and Jude. The two have a thorny, difficult past that both are trying to move beyond. That, however, is easier said than done. They love each other. They also blame each other, resent each other, and have spent years not speaking. Now Jude is back home, and Emmy needs her help. Both women are fascinating, and I loved watching them slowly, oh so slowly, make peace.

I will say—and I know this sounds braggy—that it was always clear to me who killed Allison. It was so obvious that I began to wonder if that wasn’t, in some way, deliberate. I say this because knowing who did it really isn’t the point of the novel. It’s the why that matters, and I could never have predicted that. And, woo hoo!, there’s a revelation on the novel’s final page that did indeed blow me away.

I’d definitely give this one a go if you’re a thriller reader. Yes, it’s dark, and yes, it deals with domestic abuse. But it’s not grim, the violence doesn’t overwhelm the story, and its plot is marvelously complex. And, of course, it showcases Emmy and Jude, who are quickly becoming two of my favorite crime fighters.

Come for the crime, stay for the sisters.