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 (either murder in the case of a crime novel or an intrigue to be revealed in mystery novels) and at the same time presenting the protagonist as another enigma in itself. If the writer is skilled enough, he will pose in the reader a magical bewilderment with which to keep him glued to the book constantly.
Karin Slaughter has gotten in 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 her profile is presented to us. A few habits and manias, a few eccentricities… Charlie's past is a dark sinister pit that made her a victim and ultimately a survivor, but surviving horror always comes at a cost.
And Charlie knows it. And when violence erupts again in front of her, in the small society of Pikeville, Charlie returns to the dark well through dreams evoked 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.
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