Only a couple of us in Oundle Crime had ever read anything by Karin Slaughter before, although we were very aware that she’s a bestselling author of crime fiction.
It turns out that This is Why We Lied is Book 12 in her series about Special Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The first – Triptych – was published back in 2006 and immediately shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, which is given each year to the best espionage, psychological, or adventure thriller novel.
None of us had ever read any books in Karin Slaughter’s series about Will Trent, so we read This is Why We Lied as a standalone novel. It opens with a Prologue chapter that sets the scene and introduces the murder victim – Mercy, the daughter of the owners of a mountain retreat called McAlpine Lodge. It’s a shocking beginning to what develops into a shocking story.
Will Trent and his new wife, Sara, have arrived at McAlpine Lodge at the beginning of their honeymoon, expecting to spend a relaxing time getting away from it all. Instead, they are swept up into a murder investigation, because while out hiking they hear a dreadful scream and find Mercy, dying from multiple stab wounds. They only know Mercy from seeing her at work when they’d arrived, but they’d warmed to her, while at the same time realising the McAlpine family relationships were complicated and tensions were running high.
The story becomes a locked room mystery when a huge storm strikes and cuts off McAlpine Lodge from the nearby town, so Will and Sara must get the murder investigation started while they wait for their bureau colleagues to arrive. And while it might seem as if the killer was someone in the McAlpine family, there are, of course, guests staying at the lodge and several of them might be in the frame too.
Our verdict
This isn’t an easy read because the story behind Mercy’s killing is both sad and dreadful. But Karin Slaughter slowly drip-feeds the clues and snippets of information to the reader, which draws you in and ratchets up the tension chapter-by-chapter. This is Why We Lied is one of those books some of us rather wished we could put down, but found we couldn’t.
The landscape is well-described and there’s a useful map to help, so you can easily imagine the mountain retreat and what must be involved to run it. But it’s the characters who burst from the page, and while all of them grab your imagination it’s usually not in a good way. Most of them are just downright nasty.
You soon learn that Mercy has been the subject of gossip since she was a troubled teenager, and because the mud stuck, few people locally respected her, or even liked her. It’s against this backdrop that Will and Sara must untangle the truth from the lies. And boy, there are lies! In fact, it seems as if everyone is lying, so it’s quite a relief when the team from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation does arrive, bringing additional objectivity and policing skills.
We enjoyed This is Why We Lied. It’s twisty and the story really hooks you in. Will, Sara and their GBI colleagues are well-drawn and there are some interesting team dynamics. Several of us will now be looking for more books featuring Will Trent, not least because his own back-story is intriguing. There’s definitely more to the series than meets the eye from reading this as a standalone novel. 4 Stars.
Review by: Oundle Crime
Oundle Crime thanks HarperCollins for the opportunity to read This Is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter. We are voluntarily giving an honest review.
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