A small town hides a big secret . . .

Who killed Emily Vaughn?

Prom Night. Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn dresses carefully for what’s supposed to be the highlight of any high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the night, because of that secret, she will be dead.

Nearly forty years later, Andrea Oliver, newly qualified as a U.S. Marshal, receives her first assignment: to go to Longbill Beach to protect a judge receiving death threats. But Andrea’s real focus isn’t the judge—it’s Emily Vaughn. Ever since she first heard Emily’s name a year ago, she’s been haunted by her brutal death. Nobody was ever convicted—her friends closed ranks, her family shut themselves off in their grief, the town moved on—so the killer is still out there. But now Andrea has a chance to find out what really happened . . .

This books contains mentions of sexual assault.

An unsolved murder haunting a small town. A group of cliquish and sinister students. A creepy cult with an evil leader. Just writing these out, I can’t help humming “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. But these are just some of the plot elements from Karin Slaughter’s latest humdinger of a thriller, Girl, Forgotten. It sounds like a lot, but if you are familiar with Slaughter’s books, then you know she can put a lot of balls in the air and keep them up there, in mesmerizing patterns, while the chapters fly by.

Slaughter’s new book is the second featuring Andrea Oliver, following her debut in Pieces of Her. In this standalone sequel, the rookie U. S. Marshal is now tasked with protecting a judge who’s received a series of death threats, while also being asked to secretly investigate that judge’s daughter’s murder from forty years ago. There are many secrets in this book, and toward the end, the revelations come fast and flabbergasting. But what I most love about this story is that Slaughter has written a classic whodunit. There’s a closed circle of suspects, red herrings aplenty, and I imagine that most readers, like myself, will change their minds as to the identity of the killer many times before all is revealed.

A twisty and devilish read, Girl, Forgotten is another excellent thriller from Karin Slaughter. And I, for one, would very much welcome plenty more encounters with the ever-resourceful and gutsy Andrea Oliver.