On the other side of the pond, two American authors keep alive, in their own way, the flame of the detective genre established in that country by guys as big as Hammett o Chandler. I mean Michael connelly and to whom today I invite to this space: Karin Slaughter.
In both cases of these current American police narrators, although it is true that they follow the most sinister line of a genre oriented towards the profile of the psychopathic murderer or the trauma and the consequent thriller, we find the clear role of an investigator or of a policeman faced with a case that splashes across various social spheres, sometimes with that point of veiled criticism towards the dark mechanism of everything.
La criminal literature, where today there is room for a multitude of subgenres that readers from all over the world devour with relish, it needs authors like Slaughter who maintain a recognizable role, who present us with clear protagonists who do good, although subjected to multiple temptations that humanize them and they plunge into the current quagmire of politics, corruption, their own ghosts and the worst consequences of any of these aspects that end in crime.
The Slaughter series managed to recover that distinctly police taste, with the fears that address its protagonists and with the most perverse cases that involve all the characters and that provide that point of suspense in tune with the evolution of the genre. A winning mix without a doubt.
And yet, considering Slaughter as a crime thriller writer would be inaccurate today. The best thing about this writer is that once she took over the American noir genre, she has now opened up to combinations in which suspense is gaining weight. That's the good thing about exploring your job. A writer like Slaughter knows how to establish the black case to end up bordering on many more options.
Karin Slaughter's Top 3 Recommended Books
The forgotten girl
Oblivion is that limbo, or rather a waiting room. Where each victim awaits her trial. Because if it can be true that a final judgment awaits us, that same justice has to catch up with the events that are taking place before all the evil in the world ends up concentrating. Or perhaps to prevent this evil from spreading even more quickly. Otherwise, the devil could roam freely around him if his outrages seem to have no human justice.
A girl with a secret... Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn prepares for prom night, the highlight of any high school experience. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the night, she will be dead.
A murder that remains a mystery... Forty years later, Emily's murder remains unsolved. Her friends closed ranks, her family withdrew, the community moved on. But all that is about to change.
One last chance to uncover a murderer... Andrea Oliver comes to town with a simple assignment: to protect a judge receiving death threats. But her mission is a cover. Because, in reality, Andrea is there to find justice for Emily and discover the truth before the killer decides to silence her too...
The last widow
With his mastery of the various focuses, on the same plot that progresses in parallel in superimposed scenarios, Karin Slaughter presents us with one of those time trial novels loaded with psychological suspense and maximum tension action. When the term “most ambitious work” is abused, the idea ends up wearing out. But it is that in the case of Karin Slaughter, this new novel means expanding plot horizons despite connecting with his Will Trenton saga.
Because we already know that Sara Linton is part of the same team as Will and something else..., but this story surpasses the substance of everything that came before. The FBI department, created by the author, is overwhelmed at all levels in this plot. Sometimes suspense transforms into the most complete noir genre when it connects with harsh reality. In this novel we move through the dark circles of the extreme right, xenophobia, and the most bitter racism. And it may not just be small groups, but someone supporting them from high places.
And of course, when madmen are given a path to implement a plan, the results can be devastating. The problem is that what Karin narrates does not sound so far-fetched in these days of bombastic populisms that stir up the worst in communities.
The good daughter
The dominance of a genre ends up inviting the author to feel the limits, to seek new ideas that jump from the base of one genre to another. In this novel, Karin Slaughter plays the detective novel that she is not.
There is no better hook for a mystery novel than to present a double mystery. I do not know who was the brilliant author who found in this guideline the secret for every self-respecting bestseller.
It is about posing an enigma (be it murder in the case of crime novels or an intrigue to be revealed in mystery novels) and at the same time presenting the protagonist as another enigma in himself. If the writer is skillful enough, he will pose in the reader a magical bewilderment with which to keep him glued to the book constantly.
Karin Slaughter has gotten into The good daughter reach that level of excellence so that your thriller moves in that puzzling space of the double enigma. Because in the lawyer Charlie we detect that aroma of secrecy since we are presented with her profile. Some customs and hobbies, a few eccentricities ...
Charlie's past is a dark sinister pit that turned her into a victim and ultimately a survivor, but surviving horror always comes at a cost. And Charlie knows it. And when violence breaks out again in front of her, in the small society of Pikeville, Charlie returns to the dark well through dreams conjured from the sinister reality nearby.
It is then when he finally considers that the pending causes must be closed to overcome fear. We move forward without knowing if the bloody present present has much to do with that past that opens like a wound without a suture.
But we need to know, what a doubt. We move between discoveries and twists that are reproduced in that range of thirty years between which Charlie's life changed and today that has also disrupted the lives of new and innocent victims.
Sometimes you wonder who is the most victim, a murdered person or the one who manages to escape while the other loses his life. A psychological horror story about the fear of surviving in fear, about Charlie's trauma and reality, stubborn in recovering old memories.
Other Recommended Karin Slaughter Novels
Do you know who it is?
And the moment comes when every writer of the black genre ends up addressing the issue of identity, that argument that places us all in the face of doubt about who we are, about the moments that make up our lives and about the reality about characters that interact in the novel of our life.
Nothing better for this than to empathize with characters like Andrea who lead us to the terrain of doubt in the face of the trompe l'oeil of reality to which our senses succumb. Andrea's mother is Laura, the exemplary mother with her quirks and generational contrast, nothing strange.
And of course, only the critical moment, the moment in which we have to face the worst fears can end up taking out everything that we carry inside. Knowing yourself is exposing yourself to the greatest danger.
And that is where the great surprise of this novel comes, because Laura is not the Laura her daughter knew. Knowing his mother's secret will mean a fight against time to save their lives.
Intuition
And we come to what for me is the best novel of those great police series by this author. This novel is limited to the saga of detective Will Trent.
A relevant aspect of this series is that it is not an eternal continuation but can be read independently with full enjoyment. The most curious thing about this novel is that everything starts from a possible kidnapping.
Will has only ever heard one whining child, like any other, who openly demonstrated her boredom. But Will does not see it normal, he is in an airport and something tells him that a girl should not express that boredom in such an exaggerated way.
The girl implored to return home and Will understood that message as that of the girl who is not with her parents (those who are always the only home for a child). Only when Will internalizes his hunch that something is wrong, the girl has already disappeared from his field of vision. Trent has nothing, there is no case ... he only has his heart sinking with that premonition of fear that can be a simple intuition.
But everyone knows that Trent lives with that intuition as the foundation for his research. And then the operation to locate the girl begins ...
