Recently married GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton are spending their honeymoon at the luxurious McAlpine Lodge in the North Georgia Hills. It is a place Will dreamed of visiting as a child. The beauty and serenity are outstanding, the amenities perfect, and the outdoor activities abundant, but when family dysfunction and murder are added to the itinerary, Will and Sara are back on the case in Karin Slaughter’s twelfth Will Trent mystery, THIS IS WHY WE LIED.

Will and Sara are enjoying a nighttime swim in the lake when a terrifying scream fills the air. Will knows someone is in trouble, and he sets off through the woods to find the victim. Will stumbles upon the dying lodge manager and single mother, Mercy McAlpine. She has been viciously attacked. As Will tries to save Mercy, he hears her last words, and his only thoughts turn to how devastated her sixteen-year-old son Jon will be to lose his mother. Mercy had a troubled past filled with abuse and addiction, but she had turned her life around and was managing the lodge after her father’s biking accident. She is trying to make a better life for herself and her son, but the past and those who abuse her are still at it. She has a lying ex-husband, an abusive father, a cold, prickly mother, a cowardly brother, and an aunt who fought her for custody of Jon. The lodge is a beautiful façade, and the people who run it are liars, abusers, manipulators, and predators. Even the guests are hiding something. Everyone has a secret, but who became so enraged with Mercy that they ended her life and left her to die on the watery edge of a moonlit lake?

THIS IS WHY WE LIED continues the Will Trent series, which is now a television series on ABC. This highly engaging and thrilling novel balances relationship dynamics with crime scenes and medical procedures. It is thoroughly fascinating to read about the collection of evidence and the protocol at crime scenes. Will is an interesting character with his background as a child in the foster care system. He sees things through a darkened lens and feels for those who are damaged but redeemable. The victim, Mercy, has had her fair share of manipulation and abuse by those around her. From her family to her community, Mercy was unsupported and ultimately destroyed. This “closed circle” mystery introduces the players and isolates them on this mountain with a storm-ravaged, unnavigable access road. Slaughter skillfully reveals each character’s motivations, sordid pasts, and unimaginable behaviors. Some of their actions are absolutely shocking and the killer is anyone’s guess until the harrowing conclusion, which will leave readers gasping and hoping Mercy finds peace, while the bad guys get their due. THIS IS WHY WE LIED is compelling, dark, devious, and highly entertaining.