After That Night
Doctor Sara Linton was on ER duty at one of Atlanta’s busiest trauma hospitals one night when a young woman named Dani was brought in, victim of a car accident. At first they thought all her injuries were the result of the accident. But then she haltingly shared with Sara that she had been raped and badly beaten. Her injuries were more severe than they first appeared, and despite Sara’s valiant efforts to save her, Dani died.
Dani’s experience resonates with Sara because, back when she was a medical resident, she too experienced a rape. Sara’s rapist was captured and punished, and she promises herself she’ll do whatever she can to make sure Dani’s rapist is also brought to justice.
Three years later, Sara is now a Medical Examiner, working for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and engaged to Will Trent, a special investigator with the GBI. Dani’s family asks Sara to testify about Dani’s dying declaration in a civil suit against Tommy, a young man from a wealthy family. Tommy has admitted having sex with Dani on the fatal evening, but he claims the sex was consensual, and her injuries happened after she left him.
Tommy’s father is one of Atlanta’s top pediatric surgeons. In fact Sara knows him; he was a surgical resident in the same program with her, rivals for the same fellowship, and at one time they were in the same social circle.
When Tommy’s family buys their way out of the civil suit, Sara is determined not to abandon Dani’s case — especially after Tommy’s mom hints that there’s a connection between Dani’s rape and Sara’s, fifteen years earlier.
Sara and Will, together with Will’s partner Faith, try to figure out what the connection could be. Because it’s not the GBI’s case, their investigation is unofficial. But the further they dig, the more they are convinced that they are only seeing the top of a very nasty iceberg.
Though some readers may find the scenes of violence in this novel hard to take, the focus is not on the violence itself but on how the characters deal with the trauma and its aftermath. (A repeated sentence is “remember to speak from the scar, not the wound.”) This is a rather dark story, but it comes to a satisfying conclusion. Both Sarah and Will end up stronger, bringing old fears and wounds into the daylight to start the healing process.
Karen Slaughter was born in a small town near Atlanta in 1971. She attended Georgia State University, but left before graduating to launch a sign-making company. In her spare time she wrote, producing several novel manuscripts, but didn’t succeed in selling one until 2001 when Blindsighted was published. That one, the first in her Grant County series with medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, launched Slaughter’s career as a writer.
After That Night is #11 in her popular Will Trent series, and Sara Linton has now moved into this series. A twelfth in the series, This is Why We Lied, is scheduled for publication in August 2024. The series has been picked up on TV and has become a popular police drama, now in its third season on ABC.
Slaughter’s novels often include graphic violence, particularly violence against women. In a 2021 video on YouTube, she says that what interests her is not just the violence, but how people deal with the aftermath, the trauma. She’s careful not to make the violence titillating or exploitative, but she wants to show the crimes realistically so they can’t be dismissed as “not that bad.” Her determination comes from memories of seeing her grandmother with black eyes or broken bones, while her abusive grandfather was never brought to task. “The silence never helped her,” she says.
A native of Georgia, Karin Slaughter lives in Atlanta.
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