Karin Slaughter’s gritty thriller about torn loyalties
THE GOOD DAUGHTER
by Karin Slaughter
Harper Collins, £20
RUSTY QUINN is a defence attorney in Georgia in America’s Deep South. He never trusts lying, bullying cops, feels magnetically drawn to underdogs and bends over backwards to justify appalling acts of violence perpetrated by those who hire him.
However, his idealism is put to the ultimate test when one of the twisted souls he saved from jail visits his home to say he has no intention of paying long-awaited legal bills.
Bestselling author Karin Slaughter shows how the violent at heart behave when events don’t go to plan.
When the offender discovers Rusty is not home, he decides to terrify his wife Gamma in front of their petrified young daughters Charlotte and Samantha.
Unable to argue against Gamma’s quick logic and her pleas for him to try and remain calm, the unstable thug blasts her at close range, showering the girls in blood and bone.
Miraculously the young girls survive and are horrified but not entirely surprised when even-handed Rusty tries to save his wife’s killer from the death sentence.
Charlotte stays in Georgia but Samantha can’t handle what she sees as Rusty’s misplaced sense of justice and she flees for New York, vowing never to return. However, the family comes back together 28 years later, united by another violent tragedy. Rusty begs Samantha, now a lawyer, to defend the obviously guilty gunman. Will she be a dutiful daughter or will she refuse to defend the indefensible? Slaughter’s masterful prose brings the dilemma to a tense boil as she deploys all her skills as a mystery novelist, exposing all the rights and wrongs of the US justice system. Compelling from beginning to end, The Good Daughter is surely the best suspense novel you will read this year.