False Witness
A standalone thriller by bestselling author Karen Slaughter, this one has stuck with me since I read it. For one thing, it’s the first book I’ve come across that actually takes place during the pandemic, after a year of lockdowns, with masks and social distancing and vaccinations. Though that’s just background.
Leigh is an accomplished defense lawyer in Atlanta. During lockdown, she’s been living with her husband Walter, even though they’re separated; they share custody of their sixteen-year old daughter. Leigh’s younger sister Callie is living a very different life: she’s a longtime drug addict who is one step up from living on the street; she has failed every attempt at rehab that Leigh has paid for.
Then the head of Leigh’s law firm demands that she take on a case defending a wealthy young man accused of rape. She learns that he and his mother specifically requested Leigh—she used to be his boyhood babysitter. Callie babysat him too.
The past is no longer the past. Events from twenty years ago, which Leigh thought were long forgotten, slam into her present. She and her family are suddenly in danger, and Leigh faces unrelenting pressure to compromise her principles to save them.
This novel is not for the faint of heart. It confronts themes of violence against women, child abuse, rape, murder, and drug addiction. Fear, guilt and love are mixed together, pulling the characters through events portrayed in visceral, immersive detail. At times I found the book terrifying to read. But by the time I reached the final third, I couldn’t bear to put it down.
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. It was shortlisted for the CWA dagger award for Best Thriller Debut and was eventually translated into 27 languages. The paperback edition, and her second novel, "Kisscut" (2002), made The New York Times mass market fiction bestseller list.
Slaughter has now published 21 novels, selling over 35 million copies in 120 countries. In addition to the Grant County series, she has another popular series featuring Atlanta special agent Will Trent, as well as five standalone novels, of which False Witness is her most recent.
Her 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 dismissd 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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