Features THIS IS WHY WE LIED: A Will Trent Thriller by Karin Slaughter

By R.G. Belsky

What do you write about for your next book when you have a best-selling thriller series like Will Trent which is also a hugely-popular TV show? If you’re Karin Slaughter, you do something completely different and move all the action to a remote mountain cabin where a dream honeymoon for Will suddenly turns into a murderous nightmare.

That’s the premise for THIS IS WHY WE LIED, a tense and twisty tale in which Georgia Bureau of Investigations special agent Will Trent and his new bride medical examiner Sara Linton – cut off from the rest of the world by a raging storm that has closed down the only road leading to the mountain – must solve the killing of the owner of their honeymoon lodge before more people die.

“Every book I write I want to do something new or interesting or different,” Slaughter explained during an interview with THE BIG THRILL. “I realized I’d never done a locked room mystery before.”

She also says she decided this sort of scary, isolated setting was the best way to handle the marriage between Will and Sara, both long running characters in her books.

“I’m not the kind of writer who would do romantic wedding scenes. So I thought this would be the next best thing. The hardest things to write if you’re a thriller writer is people who are happy. It was a good challenge to have the tension not come from ‘will they or won’t they break up.’

“We know they have a very strong relationship, but they are not always going to see things the same way. How will that work with them being married now and how that will change their relationship? I wanted to explore it. And also have a very horrible murder because that’s the kind of book I write.”

Karin Slaughter

The murder victim is a woman named Mercy McAlpine who is just one of many people that have been lying and hiding deep, dark secrets over the years while operating and working at the mountain resort. And, even though we learn of Mercy’s murder early in the book, Slaughter brings the victim to life for us throughout the later pages as a sympathetic, fascinating character trapped in a terrible relationship who we truly care about right to the end.

“I couldn’t start the book with Will and Sara being super happy on their honeymoon,” Slaughter said of the decision to kill off Mercy so quickly.  “I’m always looking for points of tension. I wanted to be really clear that something bad is going to happen.

“But I also really wanted to make Mercy’s life matter. She’s a very complicated woman, who makes some stupid decisions and bad choices. But she’s funny and interesting. I wanted to show that her story deserved to be told.  I wanted to give you the impression as a reader that there are all sorts of different factors on how women get trapped into these relationships.”

There’s also a compelling plot line about Will’s own troubled, unhappy background as an orphan when a kid he had terrible memories of from back then unexpectedly turns up now as one of the people working at the mountain resort – and becomes a prime murder suspect.

“I take a different approach with each book as to which character gets the focus. Previous books have centered on Sara, sometimes Faith or Amanda (two of the people Will works with as a GBI investigator.) I thought this would be a really good Will book, to be at the high point of happiness and then to have this drag him back with this horrible person from his childhood. To give him perspective and make him think how ‘I could have wound up like that.’ “

Of course, many people are familiar with Will Trent these days from the prime-time ABC series starring Ramón Rodriguez in the lead role – and Slaughter says she’s one of the biggest fans of the show too.

“I love it. I watch it as a viewer. I’m fascinated by what they’re doing. I think they’re doing a terrific job. A lot of fans were upset at first about Ramon being cast because he doesn’t look like the character in my books. But he’s such a wonderful actor and so amazing at capturing the heart of Will. I am flattered as the writer who inspired it.”

How did she first come up with the idea for the Will Trent character – with his troubled, complicated childhood background and all his quirky traits and brilliant police work today?

“I wanted him to be someone readers could relate to. And he does have this sort of dystopian background of a man who survived. I am aware a lot of my readers have survived a lot of things. My readers really respond to that in him. Especially readers who have been victims of childhood abuse. The fact Will has been able to succeed and thrive is very satisfying.”

This is the 12^th book in the Will Trent series. Before that, Slaughter wrote the best-selling Grant County series, featuring Sara Linton as one of the main characters – also set in Georgia like the Will Trent books. She said a lot of people were shocked when she stopped that series to start the new one.

“I really felt I could see a world where the Grant County books became a bit rote. I never wanted to be that writer. I’ve never been the type of writer who thinks about what the market wants, I just want to write what I want to write. I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. I made the decision then to end it. It was shocking to my publishers and a lot of readers. People thought I was crazy. I’m lucky it worked out, and I can write the books I want to write.”

Slaughter says she knew at an early age she wanted to write books – and worked at whatever odd jobs she could find to support herself to reach that goal.

“I painted houses, worked for an exterminator company and put flyers on people’s windshields. I would get up at 5 in the morning to write, then go to work, then come home to write. All I would do is write whenever I could. I had a goal I was going to be published by 30. I got my first contract at 29.”

What’s next for her?

“I’m already working on a new book. Not a Will and Sara book. The next one will be a standalone.”

But she says there will be another Will Trent thriller after that, and she plans to keep on writing them – for as long as she feels the series still works. “I have more stories to tell,” she laughs when we ask just how long Will might be around.  “I still feel strongly like there’s more. I feel equally as strongly that when there’s not…. I’ll stop.”