A prologue recounts the death of eighteen-year-old Emily Vaughn in 1982. We then meet Andrea Oliver in the present day as she is finishing her training to be a US Marshal; she is then assigned to protect Emily’s mother as she approaches retirement as a judge...and to try to prove that Andrea’s own father was responsible for Emily’s murder 40 years before, in order to keep him in prison, because he is a manipulative, dangerous man.
Slaughter gives us an engaging protagonist in Andrea and the background in the US Marshal Service is very interesting. Other characters are pretty convincing and well-drawn, but they did all seem pretty stock thriller characters. I found the cutting between the present day and the period leading up to Emily’s murder rather annoying, to be honest, and the This Time It’s Personal aspect felt silly and clichéd. I ended up skimming some bits and didn’t feel I’d missed an awful lot.
Overall, I’d say this was a competent thriller rather than anything exceptional. It’s probably 3.5-stars, but I’m rounding down rather than up because I really did think the personal involvement aspect was such a badly worn and unnecessary plot device.
(My thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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