We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Salughter
Karin Slaughter has achieved tremendous acclaim and popularity with her Grant County series, her Will Trent series and a string of best-selling standalone thriller novels. So it’s no surprise that her latest book — We Are All Guilty Here, the first in a new series set in a small Georgia town called North Falls — is a surefire winner too.
Two Missing Girls Unravel the Lies Holding North Falls Together
The story begins with what at first seems to be a simple premise when two troubled teenage girls named Madison and Cheyenne disappear — apparently having been abducted — during a fireworks show in the small town, which shocks residents and sets off a massive search for the two missing girls by local police.
But nothing is simple in a Karin Slaughter novel, and we soon learn that everyone in this small town has been hiding secrets, including the two missing girls, Madison and Cheyenne, as well as many of the people out looking for them. Nobody — and nothing — is exactly what it seems to be in North Falls.
Secrets, Suspects, and the Weight of a Missed Plea for Help
Slaughter — like in all of her past novels — does a brilliant job of telling a story filled with shocking plot twists, red herrings and multiple suspects to reveal to us how prostitution, pornography, drug use and more in the supposed quiet little town of North Falls may have led to the girls’ disappearance.
The main character in We Are All Guilty Here is Police Officer Emmy Clifton, who is also the daughter of the North Falls police chief.
For her, the case has become personal because she feels guilty over the disappearance since one of the missing girls had reached out to her for help before vanishing — and she had ignored the plea until it was too late.
But, as we soon learn, there are many people in the town of North Falls besides Officer Emmy Clifton who share guilt in this — as the perfect title for the book, We Are All Guilty Here, suggests. More and more secrets soon roll out about what the two missing teenage girls, as well as the rest of the residents of the town, have been hiding.
A Chilling Countdown Adds Tension to Every Page
One of the fascinating things is the way Slaughter gives us real facts and information about a police investigation like this at the same time she describes a race against the clock to find the two girls while they may be still alive. As an example, there’s great stuff like this about similar missing teenage girl cases:
“The victims tended to be almost exclusively females with the aggregate age of fourteen. They were more likely to be taken in an outdoor setting and to be coerced with a firearm. The kidnapper was more often than not driving a car. In forty-four percent of cases, the victim is murdered within the first hour. Seventy-eight percent die within the first three hours. Within twenty-four hours, virtually all of the victims are dead.
“Emmy noted the time on her watch — 10:58 p.m. They had officially been searching for the girls for less than an hour … that gave the kidnapper a head start of at least eighty-five minutes.
“Eighty-five minutes to terrify.
“Eighty-five minutes to torture.
“Eighty-five minutes to kill.
“Emmy told herself that they were searching for the living.
“That Madison and Cheyenne were going to beat the odds, but with every passing second, she felt her hope slipping away.”
From Past to Present, Slaughter Delivers Drama with Lasting Impact
The book is broken up into two time periods. The first half is about the actual disappearance and search for the missing Madison and Cheyenne. The second half takes place 12 years later, when we learn all the repercussions from that investigation — as well as find out more about Officer Emmy Clifton’s complex family and personal issues.
Some of Slaughter’s best-selling books from the past have already become hits on screen, too. Will Trent — based on her series about a colorful, unorthodox special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations — is in its third season as a popular primetime show on ABC; her 2018 novel, Pieces of Her, was an eight-episode miniseries on Netflix; and another one of her books, The Good Daughter, is currently being developed as a limited series for Peacock.
It would be easy to see this new North Falls series of hers making it to the screen soon, too — as readers wait eagerly for the next book to find out what’s happening with Emmy Clifton and the rest of the people there.
We Are All Guilty Here is a complex, exciting and thought-provoking book that will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page.
About Karin Salughter:
She is the author of more than twenty instant New York Times bestselling novels, including the Edgar–nominated Cop Town and standalone novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her. She is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. Pieces of Her is a #1 Netflix original series starring Toni Collette, and WILL TRENT, based on her Will Trent series, is on ABC (and streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally). False Witness and The Good Daughter are in development for television. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.
