The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

It's quite a while since I read anything by this author and that was a re-read of the early Will Trent series and I was reminded of how underwhelming she can be.  Fortunately that is not the case with this particular book.  Although it initially appears to be about a school shooting case this is very much the background to the real meat of the tale - the relationship between Sam and Charlie after the disastrous events 28 years ago.  We get to relieve those events from each protagonists viewpoint and they also detail their current situations and their relationships with each other and their father.  Although closely related it is very obvious that they are very, very different people and that the events of that night have left them both with their own physical and mental frailities.

I did find myself getting very sucked in to the lives of these 2 women.  Neither of them is perfect, nor pretends to be.  The writing brings each character to life as an individual and even if you find them to have no redeeming qualities the author's ability to make a fictional person feel like someone who is really there and telling you their story is exceptionally good.  This also holds true for many of the lesser characters even though we never hear from them directly.  The downside to this is that there is a propensity to naval gaze at the expense of moving the story along or for the character narrating that chapter to dwell overlong on things that have already been covered.

The story itself is well crafted and flows relatively well.  From the horrors of the home invasion, through to the present day and the school shooting at the girl's old high school the scenarios are richly realised on to the page.  Initially you do think this is going to be about the trial of Kelly Wilson but it soon transpires that the crime is just a conceit to get the estranged sisters back in the same town and relating to each other again.  The reasons for their ostracism of each other are spelt out and you find yourself agreeing with Charlie that she was right to cut Sam out and then you flip flop and take Sam's side; so persuasive are their individual voices.

Unfortunately, there are few real surprises in the overarching plot and, sad to say, from the off you can see how things are going to work out with the Kelly Wilson Trial - some authenticity is added in to the tale which provides perhaps the only real twist to it.  This is really a book about people and how major events can tear you apart and never quite allow you to get all the pieces back together.  From that perspective I really enjoyed it but if you are expecting a more traditional crime thriller then this one won't really fill that reading gap for you.