This is Why We Lied
Karin Slaughter
HarperCollins
Review: Lauren O’Connor-May
One of my book boyfriends, Will Trent, is married now and on honeymoon.
In this next instalment, his honeymoon is delightfully Angie-free but hijacked by murder - as one is wont to expect for a character in a successful, long-running, crime-thriller series.
Will and Sara have checked into the McAlpine Lodge for their honeymoon under false pretences. Their reason for lying is to escape the annoying questions about their professions in law enforcement.
They are not the only people at the secluded lodge with secrets though and when Mercy McAlpine is murdered, Will and Sara break cover and do what they do best, catch her killer.
As usual, there are twists and turns and surprises and, in Slaughter style, the mystery gets convolute enigmatic until it is suddenly and surprisingly resolved.
If your first question after reading this is “Who is Sara?”, then I’m assuming you are a fan of the TV series. Book series fans turned TV series watchers have long wondered when the weirdly nice screen version of Angie will get the character arc necessary for the rest of the books to translate onscreen — as any online forum will tell you. Book Angie is mostly horrible and unhinged from book 1, Triptych, and this instalment brings the series up to 12 — not counting the novellas.
Be warned, Angie is not the only book character to be nicefied for screen because the rapist and killer from Triptych is still a main, and mostly liked, character on the TV series.
If you have read other Slaughter books then you won’t be disappointed with this one. Like the others, this instalment has its own flavour, which in this case is Agatha Christie locked-room.
If you haven’t read any of Slaughter’s books but want to, feel free to dive in anywhere. While the background characters’ lives evolve and overlap, each mystery is self-contained. I read the books in the jumbled order of how I could find them at libraries —I still haven’t tracked down book 6, Criminal — and bar a few non-debilitating spoilers, the books can be read in any order.
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