Karin SlaughterĪpart from my general disgust, the real problem from a literary point of view is that it’s incredibly repetitive. The plot is entirely secondary to the horrors she shows us along the way, from repeated descriptions of both child and adult rape of the most violent kind, to the lovingly detailed and very lengthy descriptions of Callie’s drug taking, including how best to inject oneself through an abscess to get the thrill of added pain, to violent beatings in which she lingers on the crushed bones, detached eyeballs, etc., etc. But all three of them are merely vehicles for Slaughter to use her clearly well-practised shock tactics on the reader. Andrew, the rapist client of Leigh, is a stock psychopath from central casting, caricatured way past the point of credibility. Trying to be objective, it is well written for the most part and the characterisation of the two sisters is done well, even if that meant that I disliked both of them to the point of not wishing to spend time in their company and not caring what happened to them. Slaughter and I are clearly not kindred spirits. By the time I finished I felt that I needed to scrub my mind out with a brillo pad to get rid of the slime. The constant, casual use of the foulest of foul language didn’t help matters.

I’ll admit it straight away – I found the subject matter of this sordid and the graphic descriptions of rape, extreme drug abuse, violence and gore more than distasteful. And it soon becomes clear he’s enjoying the power this gives him over both sisters… She doesn’t recognise Andrew at first, but he recognises her – and he knows what she and Callie did that night. One day she is asked to defend a man who has been charged with a horrific rape. Leigh, on the other hand, has lifted herself out of their deprived beginnings, becoming a lawyer now working in a prestigious firm. Since then, Callie has spiralled into drug addiction, partly because of this early experience, and partly from getting hooked on pain medication after an accident that has left her with all kinds of physical problems. Back when they were teenagers, sisters Callie and Leigh committed a terrible crime, although they had good justification for it.

The widow fiona barton summary