Where the predators are

With backing from her publisher Century/ Arrow, American crime writer Karin Slaughter established herself quickly in the UK with her début Blindsighted (2001), the tale of a serial sex killer at large in the small Georgia town of Heartsdale, which earned the author comparisons with the likes of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs.

The paperback of Slaughter's second novel Kisscut, about the uncovering of a paedophile ring, reached number two on the bestseller list last year. While in America the writer has yet to achieve the same high profile, in the UK she is now a major name in the crime field.

The new novel Indelible (Century, 2nd September, h/b, £12.99, 1844133702) continues the story of paediatrician Sara Linton and her complicated relationship with ex-husband, now lover, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver. This time the storyline ricochets between past and present, as an episode from Jeffrey's troubled youth returns to haunt him in the form of a gun attack at the Heartsdale police station in which, seriously wounded, he is held hostage.

In her author photographs Karin Slaughter's elfin face looks impossibly fragile, in startling contrast to her dark and violent novels: in person there is an impression of a toughness behind the delicate features.

She explains that she knows and understands the environment in which the books are set: she grew up in Jonesborough, outside Atlanta, now more of a suburb of the city, but then a small town in its own right. Her mother was a housewife, her father a car dealer: the place was so small, she says in her soft drawl, that "If I got in trouble downtown, by the time I got home my mother knew about it."

But she does not believe in the baby boomer's dream of a little community: "The idyllic small town setting is such a myth. I think of places like rural Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, as being 20 years behind. Because of the poverty, there are higher instances of domestic abuse, more people have guns, more people drink and drive.

"If you look in America at where the most horrific crimes are happening, they are all in small towns. The largest paedophile internet porn ring in the world was based in a small town in Florida with a population of about 12,000—they were all in the rotary club and on the PTA. Predators will choose small towns."

Slaughter's own childhood was, she says, "fairly normal, meaning my parents divorced when I was a teenager", but it was also a childhood overshadowed by one of America's most notorious crimes.

"When I was 11 or 12, the Atlanta child murders were happening, with young black kids being killed and ending up in the Chattahoochee river. Even though we lived outside Atlanta, we were terrified, and it completely changed my life. We couldn't go out trick-or-treating at Hallowe'en, we couldn't go out after dark, we lived in a state of fear, and that really marked my life.

"It's like slowing down to look at a car accident, and then thinking, 'Oh thank God, that hasn't happened to me,' and you go slow for the next couple of miles and then you forget about it and you're speeding again. But it changes you in really subtle ways that I don't think you realise until much later."

She says she likes crime fiction because "I think how you react to stress and violence says so much about your character and who you are. You can say you are a good person, but if that's never tested, how can you really know?"

Certainly her characters are put through the mill: both Sara Linton and Lena, a serving police officer who works with Jeffrey Tolliver, have suffered rape. Lena's attack comes at the hands of the crucifixion-obsessed serial killer in Blindsighted, and Slaughter's subsequent novels explore the emotional consequences for this once independent, strong woman, as she struggles to cope with the aftermath.

"For a long time you had Raymond Chandler and all these hardboiled guys, and they abused women in these books and hung them out to dry," Slaughter comments. "Then I think the response was to make male writers extra sensitive to that, so women went from being killed and punished for being 'soiled' to being elevated to martyr status.

"Every woman I know knows someone who has been raped or sexually abused—statistically it is almost impossible not to. It is very possible that these two women, Sara and Lena, would have experienced something of this, and I wanted to show two different types of recovery.

"Because Sara had her family around her she got a sense of herself back. A lot of people thought Lena wouldn't be in the second book, which I thought was very telling. Statistically her reaction is much more common than Sara's—in A Faint Cold Fear [Slaughter's third novel], she's out of control, makes really bad choices and does really self-destructive things."

Slaughter's success with the trade has been helped by the fact that she understands the vital importance of marketing and promotion to the success of her books. Before deciding to try writing as a career, she ran her own business in Atlanta, as a sign-painter. "It was the best preparation ever for understanding that, as passionate as I feel about writing, once I finish my book that's when the hard work begins—the jacketing and the marketing," she explains.

"That's where I lucked out: Susan Sandon [Arrow publisher] was one of my champions with Blindsighted and I lucked out that these people who could do so much for me really loved my work."

Benedicte Page