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Summary
Summary
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"There's deception, sabotage, violence, family secrets . . . all the stuff you could want from a fictional page-turner."-- theSkimm
Recommended by Washington Post * theSkimm * GMA.com * Popsugar * Bustle * Atlanta Journal-Constitution * Augusta Chronicle * Sun-Sentinel * Mystery and Suspense Magazine * and more!
He saw what you did. He knows who you are...
From the New York Times bestselling author of Pieces of Her and The Silent Wife, an electrifying standalone thriller.
AN ORDINARY LIFE...
Leigh Collier has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She's an up-and-coming defense attorney at a prestigious law firm in Atlanta, would do anything for her sixteen-year-old daughter Maddy, and is managing to successfully coparent through a pandemic after an amicable separation from her husband Walter.
HIDES A DEVASTATING PAST...
But Leigh's ordinary life masks a childhood no one should have to endure ... a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and ultimately destroyed by a brutal act of violence.
BUT NOW THE PAST IS CATCHING UP...
On a Sunday night at her daughter's school play, she gets a call from one of the firm's partners who wants Leigh to come on board to defend a wealthy man accused of multiple counts of rape. Though wary of the case, it becomes apparent she doesn't have much choice if she wants to keep her job. They're scheduled to go to trial in one week. When she meets the accused face-to-face, she realizes that it's no coincidence that he's specifically asked for her to represent him. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he may know what happened over twenty years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades avoiding her past.
AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
Suddenly she has a lot more to lose than this case. The only person who can help is her younger, estranged sister Callie--the last person Leigh would ever want to drag into this after all they've been through. But with the life-shattering truth in danger of being revealed, she has no choice...
"A high-stakes thriller . . . Her heroines are believable, flawed and courageous." -OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1998, teen sisters Callie and Leigh, the heroines of this superb thriller from bestseller Slaughter (The Silent Wife), murder Buddy Waleski, who sexually abused them for years while they babysat his son, Trevor, in Chicago. They leave the Waleski kitchen spotless after cleaning up any evidence of the murder and hide Buddy's body. In 2021, Callie, who became addicted to heroin after a gymnastics accident left her in constant pain, and Leigh, a defense attorney, unexpectedly confront the past after Leigh's boss assigns the case of an alleged serial killer to her. During their first meeting, Andrew Tenant tells Leigh he's actually the little boy she once babysat--Trevor Waleski--and implies that he knows the sisters killed his father. Callie and Leigh work urgently to determine how and what he knows. Breaking into the abandoned former Waleski house, Callie finds a crawl space with cameras aimed both at the kitchen where Buddy's murder occurred and the living room couch where Callie was repeatedly raped as a 12-year-old by Buddy. If Leigh doesn't secure a not guilty verdict, the pathological Andrew threatens to retaliate by releasing his father's videos to the media and murdering her 16-year-old daughter. A shocking tragedy at the end will keep readers transfixed. Slaughter is writing at the top of her game. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. (July)
Kirkus Review
A master of the no-holds-barred law enforcement thriller turns to legal intrigue, with shattering results. A week before he's to stand trial for the aggravated assault and rape of DataTel district manager Tammy Karlsen, car-dealership scion Andrew Tenant fires his lawyer and asks for a new one: Leigh Collier, a rising star at an Atlanta white-shoe firm. Originally baffled by the request, Leigh quickly realizes that her new client has a special reason to have asked for her: He's recognized her from a magazine photo as the older sister of Callie, the babysitter who killed his father, Buddy Waleski, when his latest pedophile assault on her turned violent 23 years ago. In fact, the truth is even darker than that. Leigh was an active participant in the killing. Now she's determined to do everything she can to torpedo the defense she's preparing for Andrew, who's accused of stabbing Tammy Karlsen in exactly the way Callie stabbed his father, while persuading both her client and her watchful senior partner that she's doing her utmost to represent him. As she learns more and more particulars about the case and her client, Leigh realizes that her plan doesn't go nearly far enough. Andrew is guilty of this assault and others, but he doesn't just want her to get him off: He plans to blackmail her into complying with a potentially endless series of demands. How can she strike back at a monster who holds all the cards? Only by tapping into the depthless power of sisterhood with Callie, who's descended into addiction but still loves Leigh with a ferocity that makes the pair of them as dangerous as the man who's targeted them. Combines disarming sensitivity to the nuances of the tangled relations among the characters with sledgehammer plotting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Slaughter shines an intense spotlight on a new normal laced with COVID-19 protocols and a cast of survivors battling a ruthless pandemic, a serial sadist, and a lifetime of unbeatable odds. When Andrew Tenant, the heir to Atlanta's most prestigious auto empire, asks Leigh Collier to lead his defense against rape charges, she feels her suburban fantasy life being snatched away, tossing her back into her squalid childhood home, ducking punches and plotting her escape. As teens, Leigh and her younger sister, Callie, babysat Andrew. They also killed his father, Buddy, when he attempted to kill Callie after years of sexual abuse. Andrew doesn't waste time revealing his agenda: he knows what they did, and he plans to continue preying on women while he draws a torturous penance from them. Leigh immediately springs Callie from her latest flophouse to strategize how they'll keep what they did hidden. Leigh, haunted by survivor's guilt over Callie's abuse, and Callie, struggling to resist the comfort of a heroin binge, begin using their street smarts and working courtroom angles to wage war against Andrew and finally find peace in their unbreakable connection. Slaughter doesn't save her twists for the end, instead peppering them throughout the intricately layered story amid stomach-churning near misses and gripping character revelations. Equal parts hyperrealistic thriller and epic tragedy, Slaughter's latest is pitch-perfect storytelling.
Library Journal Review
No word yet on what transpires in this stand-alone from the hugely best-selling founder of the Save the Libraries project. With a 250,000-copy first printing.
