Interview: NY Times Best Selling Author Karin Slaughter Discusses PRETTY GIRLS

In her latest book, PRETTY GIRLS, New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter has adjusted her perspective ever so slightly, resulting in a thoroughly captivating page-turner that reads like a Southern Gothic novel mixed with a modern, edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller. Slaughter is primarily known as the author of the Will Trent and Grant County series of books, both of which center on law enforcement officers working in her home state of Georgia. While PRETTY GIRLS does take place in and around Atlanta, the book's main characters are not the individual's paid to investigate crimes, but instead are people impacted by crimes who take it upon themselves to get to the bottom of a deeply-personal mystery.

"I wanted to show what crime does to families," Slaughter said. "I have written about crime for many years now from the point of view of the detectives, or the people trying to solve the case. And, I wanted to talk a little bit about the other side of that, and not just the actual crime, but also what the crime not being solved can do to people."

At the center of PRETTY GIRLS are Claire and Lydia, two extremely strong women connected by painful events in their shared past. However, despite not speaking in nearly two decades, a tragedy in Claire's life brings the women together, and forces them to come together, despite their long-held better judgement.

"With Claire and Lydia, it presented a great opportunity to talk about how their lives went off the rails," Slaughter said. "I wanted to show how strong they could be, and how together they're even stronger. It's true for all relationships, not just women; when you have someone who supports you and has your back, you can absolutely take on more than if you didn't."

Like Slaughter's other books, PRETTY GIRLS is a twisting, turning thrill-ride that keeps the reader engaged and guessing from the first page of the prologue. However, its inspiration is almost as mysterious as the novel itself. While on medication for a slipped disc, the idea came to Slaughter in a dream.

"I did have this dream about the opening of PRETTY GIRLS," she said. "It was sort of like a fever dream; you know, half awake-half asleep. I wrote it down, and I didn't just scribble something crazy, I had real details, concrete details, and when I woke up the next morning, I thought, 'Wow, that sounds like a really good book.'"

Slaughter's dream seamlessly became the opening of the novel in which heartbreak leads Claire to discover the unthinkable about the person she thought she knew best. "Something awful happens, and then she goes home and finds something even worse," Slaughter said.

After writing the Grant County and Will Trent series, as well as the Georgia series in which the two merge, since 2001, PRETTY GIRLS is the second straight book for Slaughter originally intended to stand-alone.

"I wrote a book called CRIMINAL in my (Georgia) series, and it was partly set in the 1970s," Slaughter explained. "I talked to a lot of police officers who came up in the 70s, and it really made me want to write more about that time period, but I knew that I would need to tell a story outside the series."

After writing another Georgia series book, UNSEEN, the author wrote COP TOWN, a police drama set in 1974 Atlanta, which she quickly decided had to become its own series. However, she still felt like she needed to take some time to focus on a story outside of a larger narrative.

"I just thought, 'I still need a little break from Will and those characters, because I want to keep the ideas fresh, and I want to keep delivering to my readers the sorts of books that they like to read," Slaughter said. "I just had this great idea for PRETTY GIRLS, and it was really a joy to write. It was the kind of book where I didn't feel like there were any holes. Of course, it took a lot of work, but it was something that kind of wrote itself."

Despite how easily the story flowed for Slaughter, she does admit that, after nearly 15 years, not writing from the perspective of a sheriff or GBI agent was difficult.

"When I'm writing about cops, there's a reason that they're at crime scenes, and they're talking to witnesses, and interviewing suspects, and looking at forensics reports," Slaughter said, "and for Claire and Lydia, I had to find a believable reason for them to have access to information that would propel them through the plot. I didn't want it to be 'two feisty gals solving a crime.' I wanted it to feel very realistic, even if someone reading it says, 'I would never do that,' they would understand why Lydia and Claire did it."

To do that, Slaughter focused on keeping her characters as consistent as possible. "I want the person you meet in those early chapters to be believable as the person I leave you with in the later chapters," she said. "I wanted readers to believe the journey they were going on."

For Slaughter, having nuanced, well-rounded characters is especially important when writing mysteries and thrillers. It's inevitable in these types of books that arm-chair detectives, like myself, will try to guess along with the characters, no matter how many steps behind the author we normally we are.

"While I wouldn't want people to figure it all out," Slaughter admitted, "I make sure that I write it so it doesn't ruin it if they do; so that they want to keep reading to figure out why it happened, and how it's going to affect the people that are involved in the story."

Slaughter is currently at work on the next Will Trent novel, THE KEPT WOMAN, due out in September 2016. While she said that she doesn't plan on ever writing a follow-up to PRETTY GIRLS, with a new book coming out almost every year, Slaughter is likely to have something to excite and terrify just about any reader.

"Every reader is different, that's the great thing about reading though; there's nothing that I can put on the page that will scare someone like what they can come up with in their own mind," Slaughter said. "I can make some suggestions, but they see this movie in their heads, and I never see that movie, just like they don't see my movie. I think that's what makes books uniquely self-contained as a form of entertainment. All your experiences come to bear when you're reading this book."

You can purchase a copy of Karin Slaughter's PRETTY GIRLS in bookstores nationwide, or online here.

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Did you visit Slaughter's Atlanta in PRETT TOWN? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. If you want to follow along with my "366 in 366" articles, you can check out #BWW366in366 on Twitter.

Photo Credit: KarinSlaughter.com

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