Kisscut is a novel up to its
elbows in deeply troubling subjects: child abuse, child pornography,
pedophilia, incest, self-mutilation, suicide, torture, and rape.  It frames them with a mystery: in
Heartsdale, a sleepy little town in rural Georgia, thirteen-year-old Jenny
Weaver outside the town ice rink on a Saturday night, points a gun at
sixteen-year-old Mark, saying that she is going to kill him unless the police
chief Jeffrey Tolliver shoots her first. 
Jeffrey feels that he is left with no choice, and he does shoot the
girl.  The novel follows the aftermath
of this killing.  Jeffrey joins forces
with the town coroner and pediatrician Sara Linton.  Matters are complicated by the fact that Sara is his ex-wife, and
they were meeting at the rink because they were on a date, possibly getting
back together.  Their rekindled romance
provides one of the only positive themes. 
It is not enough to offset the horror of the rest of the book; the easy
prose draws in the reader, but leaves a sense of revolted shock.

Karin Slaughter has a talent for
building suspense.  The opening scene is
gripping, told first from Sara’s point of view, then moving to Jeffrey’s.  It starts out mildly but moves quickly to
the standoff between the police chief and the young teenage girl, with Jeffrey
killing her in front of a crowd of onlookers. 
Told in the third-person, the narrative perspective moves mainly between
Sara and Jeffrey, occasionally moving to detective Lena Adams, who not long ago
was held prisoner by a sexual psychopath, and is still trying to recover from
the ordeal.  Each of the main characters
is living with a burden, struggling to achieve a sense of balance.  The reading by Clarinda Ross in the
unabridged audiobook is a strong performance, capturing the southern accents,
keeping the characters distinct, and making their personal misery
convincing. 

Nevertheless, Kisscut is a
difficult novel to like.  The horrifying
plot often feels gratuitous, with an unpleasant mismatch between the
seriousness of the subject matter and the genre of the mystery novel.  Of course, most mysteries delve into the
dark realms of human psychology and action, and stories of serial killing and
sadistic murder regularly get into the best-seller lists.  There is nothing new in using these themes
for entertainment.  Maybe the problems
for Slaughter is that she goes a little deeper than most into the psychology of
the sexual use of children, making clear the damage it causes.  The story is unrelenting in its flow of
terrible revelations about the actions of parents towards innocent children
combined with the frequent mistakes of Jeffrey, Sara and Lena leading to
irreparable damage to others.  To read Kisscut
for entertainment is to attempt to take pleasure in the pain of others, and so
it places the reader in an uncomfortable position.  Other novels delve into child abuse, but they are generally in
the more serious form of a family drama. 
Slaughter’s approach in pushing the boundaries of the mystery and horror
genres with a harder psychological edge feels alternately brave and cheaply
manipulative.  It certainly won’t please
all readers, yet some will find it memorable and challenging.

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction