Welcome to North Falls, a small town where your family name holds a lot of weight and your secrets can get you killed. When a mother and daughter are shot in their home, Sheriff Emmy Clifton knows the answers to the crime lie somewhere in the town’s history in THE SECRETS WE HIDE by Karin Slaughter, the second novel in the North Falls series.

After leaving her mother’s funeral, Sheriff Emmy Clifton, along with her sister Jude and son Cole, hears gunshots coming from a residential neighborhood. They stop to investigate and walk into an active crime scene. Ex- Detective Allison Vickery of the Clayville police force is found dead, and moments later, her teenage daughter, Mandy, falls from the ceiling, clinging to life from a gunshot wound to the head. Who wanted the mother and daughter killed? Everyone believes it’s Allison’s abusive husband, Bill Garrison. It looks like Allison finally had a plan in place to leave him. Did Bill stop her? As Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her ex-FBI agent sister Jude start looking into Allison’s and Mandy’s lives, there are several unanswered questions. Who was Mandy seeing the last few weeks before the shooting? Where did the $300,000 found in the attic come from, and why hadn’t Allison left before? As more secrets are uncovered, questions arise about trauma, motherhood, dirty cops, and small-town secrets.

THE SECRETS WE HIDE is a police procedural that is methodical in its approach to solving the crime. The characters are fully developed, immersing readers in their lives and the secrets they hide. Emmy was, at times, difficult to understand, but Jude is the star of this novel with her bravado and expertise. The action starts early, and there are many players in the puzzle. As the twists and turns keep coming, more layers are added, including a local drug dealer, informants, suspicious deaths, old crimes and trials, witness tampering, and trauma from extended abuse. There’s a lot of intrigue and detail, but the pace suffered from the rehashing of the investigation, prolonged interviews, and repetitive conversations. All in all, the story was good, and riding along as the investigation unfolded was entertaining. It just took a little too long to get to the conclusion.