THE GOOD DAUGHTER by Karin Slaughter

This thriller has two blockbuster crimes.  First, masked intruders hold Gamma and her two daughters, Sam and Charlie, at gunpoint, ultimately killing Gamma, although the killers really intended to go after her husband, Rusty.  He is a lawyer who defends murderers, rapists, and other unsavory characters in Pikeville, GA, and is still at his office when the attack takes place.  Several decades later, Charlie, separated from her beloved husband Ben, a prosecutor, has an ill-advised one-night stand with a middle school teacher and happens to be at the school when 18-year-old Kelly kills the principal and a young girl.  I really enjoyed this book to a point.  It moves at a brisk pace with lots of suspense and decent writing.  In fact, there is a scene near the beginning in which Sam has been buried alive during which I could not turn the pages fast enough.  Also, Kelly’s arraignment in what appears to be a cut-and-dried first-degree murder case is a fist-pump moment for her defense attorney.  The twists at the end, however, are too much.  For one thing, the author tells us what happened on the day that Gamma was murdered, and then she tells us what really happened.  Huh?  This book has third person narration, so that we can’t blame the changing story on an unreliable narrator.  I definitely think that the author could have handled this deception a little more adroitly.  Also, the reasons for the estrangement between some family members seemed silly to me.  Again, I think the author missed an opportunity here to come up with a blockbuster disagreement or two.