Karin Slaughter: Books that changed my life

Encyclopedia was this super-smart kid who solved mysteries with Sally, his friend and sidekick. But I would get really annoyed that she was never allowed to be quite as clever as him—and there began the stirrings of feminism in my eight-year-old mind.

Sometimes I could figure out the puzzles before Encyclopedia and a little seed was planted about the importance of female protaganists.

My favourite scene is when Scarlett shoots dead the Yankee who breaks into Tara, where she’s living with Melanie. Up to this point Scarlett hasn’t had much time for Melanie—she married Ashley Wilkes, who Scarlett believes herself in love with—but when Melanie appears beside her with a sword in case the Yankee needs finishing off, their relationship changes.

It was an important lesson to me; it showed how violence can be used to reveal character. It can tear people apart but also bring them together.

I was always interested in the darker side of life. I once taped Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy photograph onto my lunch box. My parents were called in to school but my father just said, “She’s always been weird, leave her alone.” I read Flannery O’Connor at 12 years old and loved that she wrote about unusual people—those who were dislikable and cruel.

Karin Slaughter's new book The Good Daughter is out now 

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