Book Review: This Is Why We Lied

Spoilers!

Karin Slaughter is only getting better and better with her books. I knew I was in for something special when the 12th Will Trent book, 2024’s This is Why We Lied, had a map at the start of it. Slaughter wasn’t shy about this book being her homage to Agatha Christie with repeated references throughout, including to Hercule Poirot (a cat takes his name) and And Then There Were None, along with Faith’s excitement about tackling a “locked-room mystery” on a mountain. Slaughter, of course, added her Will Trent series characters and her trademark disturbing twists and traumas. I was hooked from the get-go, and I literally kept a running list of suspects on my iPhone Notes app because Slaughter kept me guessing until the end. Even though, I had my suspicions of who the killer was fairly early on.

Trent, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and Sarah Linton, the medical examiner for the GBI, are all set to enjoy their honeymoon in the idyllic mountain escape of the McAlpine Family Lodge. The McAlpines have been running this lodge consisting of desolate cabins, lakes, creeks, and mountain views since the Civil War. But because this is a Slaughter book, in homage to Christie, there couldn’t be a honeymoon without a murder.

The person who runs the lodge now is Mercy, who in tragic irony to her name never received an ounce of mercy in her life. She took over running the McAlpine Family Lodge after her dad, Cecil or Papa as he’s known, became wheelchair-bound from a mountain biking accident. When Mercy was a child, her father, and her mother, who goes by Bitty, took in Dave, a foster kid from the same foster home Will grew up in. Dave was abused and treated terribly throughout his life. Despite being adopted by the family and being Mercy’s sister, Dave grooms Mercy into his lover. He impregnates her. They have a boy named Jon. Dave is mentally abusive and controlling and physically abusive toward Mercy. Mercy was also abused, and still is verbally abused, by her father. Mercy is sober after years of abusing drugs and alcohol. Early on, it’s hinted that Mercy also killed someone while drunk driving, her best friend, Gabby. Bitty dotes on Dave, but is disdainful of Mercy. Jon, now 16, is bitter toward his mother. Delilah, Mercy’s aunt, tried to take custody of Jon when Mercy was still under drugs. Christopher, Mercy’s brother, is aloof and apathetic. Christopher’s best friend, known as Chuck, tried to rape Mercy and is otherwise creepy. Finally, Cecil and Bitty are about to sell the McAlpine Family Lodge to investors instead of letting Mercy take it over, this despite Mercy finally turning a considerable profit with her stewardship of the business.

Mercy is dealing with all of that past history and trauma and present trauma and tension. That’s what Will and Sara walk into. That’s what the other guests also walk into. Those guests are Sydney and Max, the investors; Drew and Keisha, repeat visitors; Gordon and Landry, with the latter actually going by Paul and he has “Gabby” tattooed on his chest, so, he’s probably related to Gabby; and Monica and Frank, who are still grieving their dead son. Mercy responds to everything by turning acerbic and threatening to burn everything to the ground if the family takes the Family Lodge away from her. She hints at things that would bring them all down. In other words, Slaughter sets the table for a number of people who would have motive to murder Mercy.

Naturally then, Mercy is killed shortly thereafter the table-setting. Will and Sarah were having a romantic time in the lake when they hear someone scream out. When Will reaches the source of the scream, he finds Mercy brutally stabbed multiple times on the brink of death. Her last words are about Jon. Incidentally, Sarah went to the main house on the compound where the family is and runs into Jon puking his guts out. She presumes he’s puking because he’d been drunk earlier (and yelling at his mom about hating her). Paul, who doesn’t exactly seem like a reliable narrator, said he saw Mercy making the rounds on the Loop Trail around 10:30 p.m. Later, Will and Sarah learn Mercy made multiple phone calls to Dave and left one voicemail at 11:28 p.m. Will found her around midnight. The murder then took place in that 32-ish minute timeframe. One murder, eight guests who could be suspects (Sydney, Max, Drew, Keisha, Gordon, Landry/Paul, Monica, and Frank) and then the family members (Cecil, Bitty, Christopher, Dave, Jon, and even Delilah comes back for the first time in a decade incidentally upon news of a sellout to investors). There’s also the possibility that it could be one of the workers, like Alejandro, the cook, or Penny, the bartender.

So, here is my Notes app running list of the suspects in real time as revelations came:

• Dave is the most obvious suspect from the get-go given his past abuse of Mercy, that he nearly strangled her to her death the day of her murder, and his basic greed at the windfall that would come his way should the investor sale go through. Will feels the same way and not just because he already harbors dislike for Dave stemming from the foster home. When Will finds Dave in the abandoned Camp Awinita area of the compound, Dave has scratches on his body and a bloody handprint on his shirt. Suspicious indeed!
• I said in my Notes: Jon is still viable; he could’ve killed her and then got back toward the main house. Sarah also picked up on him having recently showered. Again, he had that explosive argument with Mercy, Mercy has his name on her lips as she gives her final breaths, and of course, the son being the killer is one of the more shocking ways this could go. That’s why I wrote him down. You can’t exclude him as a suspect because he’s only 16. Also notable is that Jon also didn’t stick around when Will began questioning everyone. He ran away.
• Paul lied about his name and he has a clear motive for wanting revenge on Mercy. Plus, when Will alerts the compound to Mercy’s death, he finds Paul showering.
• Monica was my outside pick. She’s the grief-stricken-mother-turned-alcoholic. But I thought, maybe Slaughter only wants us to think Monica is an alcoholic, but that’s to mask her more sinister motives.
• Drew and Keisha didn’t immediately show when Will alerted the compound, but they also had a valid reason for not hearing the bell: a loud sleep apnea machine and a box fan. Plus, I could understand a Black couple being wary of talking to the police (but also, everyone should be wary of talking to the police without a lawyer present).
• Christopher doted on Gabby, which gives him motive against his own sister, and he was also in a bathrobe when Will alerted the compound, i.e., he also showered.
• Sydney and Max are the least viable suspects among the guests. That said, they didn’t want to talk to Will and they hightailed it out of the compound with their BMV shortly thereafter.
• Chuck is creepy. Enough said.

For what it’s worth, I never suspected the kitchen staff or “townies.” We’re told they’re usually back down the mountain and into town by 8:30 p.m. — well before Mercy was killed. That could have been misdirection on Slaughter’s part, and we do later learn Mercy and Alejandro were shacking up, but Mercy’s family is too messed up for it not to connect back to them.

Dave, by the way, gets cleared by the voicemail because in the voicemail, Mercy is asking for Dave to come to her. She obviously wouldn’t be asking Dave to come to her if he was there killing her. The most viable suspect has been taken off the table.

Slaughter then brings Faith and Amanda into the fun once Will and Sarah are able to contact the outside world. Faith is Will’s partner at the GBI and Amanda is their boss. Faith is the self-aware and self-acknowledged hilarious sidekick to the Will and Sarah romcom. She certainly provides the humor as the “fish-out-of-water” character in the book, but in this case, it’s the city girl in the country world. But then she’s also able to turn the switch and be the serious detective interrogating suspects and backing up Will. I love the Faith character in this series so much!

Back to murder, with the table now reset. At first, Will, Sarah, and Faith think it might be Drew because they find the broken off handle of the knife that killed Mercy in his toilet tank. But it was so obviously planted there by the real killer they quickly move on. Another murder happens right under Will’s nose unbeknownst to him. Will finished interrogating Chuck and then Chuck dies when Will turns his back. Turns out, Chuck was poisoned. Now, we have two murders. My head immediately went, I doubt it’s two murders and one killer — rather, it’s two murders and two murderers. Chuck’s death leads them to Christopher, who it’s been hinted at has a side gig of sorts with Chuck and maybe Mercy. Christopher and Chuck were selling their own homemade liquor at prices with an upcharge to patrons of the Family Lodge, as well as the town’s strip clubs. Mercy knew about it. Christopher also knew Chuck was a creep who had tried to rape his sister, so, he was drugging him at just the right dose to give him diarrhea. This was his way of “teaching Chuck a lesson.” But he messed up with the latest version because this time, Chuck fell in the creek near Will and drowned to his death. The GBI then has Christopher for the manslaughter death of Chuck, as well as the illegal sale of alcohol. Did he also murder Mercy? Nah.

The team goes back to who they feel like they should have suspected from the get-go: Paul. But Paul’s story is not what you’d expect. He did see Mercy at 10:30 p.m., and in fact, he did talk to her. It was to say he forgave her. That’s because Paul was able to ascertain through a private detective and a payout of $10,000 to Dave, that it was Cecil, not Mercy who killed Gabby. Cecil was a sociopath, who didn’t like the way Gabby was and that his son doted on her. He raped her and then put her in a car with a drugged up Mercy (I wasn’t clear if Mercy was already drugged up or he drugged her up) and pushed the car down a mountain. I think he intended to kill them both. But only Gabby died. Mercy was left with a facial scar and the far worse “scar” of thinking she’d killed her best friend. Dave, the despicable monster he is, helped Cecil cover it all up and never told Mercy the truth. Paul’s innocent. He also puts Cecil in a new light when he attests to Mercy leaving the trail to return to the main house and seeing Cecil stand up from his wheelchair. I was like, son of a gun, Slaughter put the most obvious red herring in front of my face — a despicable man in a wheelchair — and I missed it. Then the GBI team starts thinking, did Cecil kill her to hide his secret of killing Gabby? But no, he couldn’t have gotten down to the bachelor cabins where Mercy was killed. Someone had to have helped him. Dave! Maybe the voicemail didn’t provide Dave an alibi. When Mercy said, “What are you doing here? was she talking to Dave? Did Dave help cover up yet another Cecil murder?

Back where the shit-hit-the-fan at the start of the book, the dining room, Will, Faith, and another GBI agent confront Dave, with Cecil, Bitty, Jon, and a few of the guests watching. Only at the last moment does Will realize Dave didn’t kill Mercy after all, despite Dave suddenly confessing to it.

So, who killed Mercy? We’ve had twists and turns, the shocking revelations about Cecil, the counterintuitive turnabout from Paul, and Dave suspected, alibied, suspected, and dismissed. My original suspicion: Jon. Mercy’s own son killed her. He was bitter toward his mother because she kept going back to her abuser, Dave. Which had the effect of leaving Jon with another abuser: Bitty. Not that Mercy knew that. But she realizes what was in front of her all along. Bitty abused and groomed Dave, and was doing it all over again with Jon. She brainwashed Jon against her. Riled him up enough to kill Mercy. That’s why when he does kill her, Mercy’s last words are to forgive Jon, nonetheless. The “Thirty-Seven Minutes Before the Murder” chapter was brutal to read and sad. Told from Mercy’s perspective of learning of Bitty’s abuse and trying to get Jon off the mountain. Mercy also never was able to learn she didn’t cause Gabby’s death. Ugh.

One item that I don’t believe Slaughter closed up by the end of the book is that we learn Mercy was pregnant when she was killed. But we never learn whose baby it is?!

Anyhow, Slaughter is the best. What a riveting ode to Agatha Christie. Nobody writes trauma through popular genre fiction like Slaughter. She never has a wasted word, either. I can’t wait to read what Slaughter has up next. I can’t believe I’ve caught up and read all 12 books in the Will Trent series thus far!