The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Charlotte and Samantha Quinn are teenage sisters whose happy though eccentric family has been ripped apart. First, a Molotov cocktail burned down their house; a week later, their brilliant mother Gamma was senselessly murdered as her assailants searched for Rusty, their defense attorney father, in an attempt to void a debt the family never expected to be repaid. The girls flee, literally running for their lives. Sam stumbles, urging Charlie to run.

Twenty-eight years later, Charlie has become a lawyer like her father, working in the small north Georgia town where her family is still looked at a bit askance since everyone knows a criminal Rusty has defended at some point or another. Charlie is still running, keeping secrets deeply buried from that long-ago night. One morning, while trying to ease herself out of an awkward situation, Charlie finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time as a crime at the middle school tears the community apart.

Karin Slaughter writes strong characters, moving from 1989 back to the present as we get to know Charlie, Sam, Rusty, Gamma, and other integral people tied up this story. Most of the characters are beautifully imperfect with both good aspects and bad revealed as the plot progresses. The people all feel so real, even as the suspense builds in a series of events. This one kept me on the edge of my seat. A few graphic descriptions of the crimes also made me uncomfortable, but by that point I was already invested in the characters and I had to know what happened, even if I had to skim over some blood spatters and gore. (I’m being gentle here, so if blood and guts bother you, just skip this one and ask your local librarian to recommend a less gritty author.)

Slaughter writes stories threaded with a strong sense of justice, even though not all the villains receive every bit of punishment that they perhaps deserve. Sometimes her characters seem to just sigh and say “enough is enough,” and mend relationships in order to move on with their lives for the sake of their own sanity. In the end, does the bad guy (a totally gender neutral term used here, for the sake of not giving away the whodunit) get what’s coming to them? Do they receive the punishment fitting for their crimes? Crime is never as simple as one might think; too many motives and actions and consequences are all knotted up together creating a big messy problem which the criminal justice system tries to untangle for the sake of what is true and what is deserved by all parties.

In the end, Charlie must come to peace with the traumas she has faced, the secrets she has kept since she was thirteen, and the friends and family who care about her most.