FALSE WITNESS by Karin Slaughter
As Bette Davis said in the movie “All About Eve”, “Fasten your seat belts its going to be a bumpy night.” Well once you start Karin Slaughter’s latest chiller/thriller FALSE WITNESS you are goIng to have many bumpy nights because this book is goIng to take you down the rabbit hole to a world of darkness and depravity. Now who is ready to sign up for this adventure? Put my name at the top of the list because I love the way Slaughter writes and I love the way she plots her stories.
FALSE WITNESS is primarily the story of two sisters. Leigh is a very successful lawyer living in Atlanta. Her younger sister Callie also lives in Atlanta but she is a drug addict. Leigh would do anything and everything for Callie. The same is true for Callie. She would do anything for Leigh but wanting to do something and being able to do something are two different things.
Leigh and Callie share a secret from their past and in the present day this secret might destroy them both. Someone knows what they did or at least claims to know, and this person threatens to disclose it unless Leigh does his bidding in a court trial. The sisters try to find a solution to their problem and that makes up the bulk of the book.
To understand these two main characters the reader has to inhabit their worlds. You have to understand what it took for Leigh to reach the level of success she has, and you have to recognize the emotional scars that were inflicted upon her along the way. Then there is Callie. Her journey is one thru darkness and she has the physical and emotional scars to prove it.
In the past I have written about Slaughter’s skills in creating characters. I have also mentioned how good she is at creating inventively twisting plots. Then there are the humorous moments she always manages to inject, and the heart-wrenching emotional moments she includes. All of these elements are found in FALSE WITNESS. However I should have mentioned in the past and again about this book that Karin Slaughter is an proof positive amazing writer. When you enter a book like FALSE WITNESS you are entertained, emotionally captured, and in many, many ways educated. Try finding that combination of attributes in any other author. Maybe there are one or two but do they do it consistently, book after book? Karin Slaughter does.
There will be those who say Karin Slaughter’s books are too dark and too depraved. So? She writes about characters who are trying to find the light of happiness. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. In FALSE WITNESS you certainly can’t gamble on it. Leigh and Callie are two women being swept along by the foibles of fate. You can only pray a life raft of sorts appears.
I get Karin Slaughter. I understand her and I appreciate her. She is one of the best. I hope you feel that way too. FALSE WITNESS is her storytelling at the top of her game.
FALSE WITNESS is published by William Morrow. It contains 400 pages and sells for $28.99.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
