We Are All Guilty Here

We Are All Guilty Here (2025) is a crime thriller novel by Karin Slaughter. The novel is the first title in Slaughter’s new North Falls Series. After two teenage girls go missing and turn up dead in North Falls, Georgia, police deputy Emmy Clifton does everything in her power to put a perpetrator behind bars. Twelve years later, however, the accused goes free and Emmy is left doubting her police work from a decade prior. With the help of her colleagues, Emmy searches for clues and answers to find the real man behind the Broken Angels Case. Written from the third-person point of view, the novel explores The Fragile Veneer of Small-Town Life, The Impact of the Past on the Present, and The Challenges of Coping with Grief and Guilt.

Karin Slaughter is a critically acclaimed crime novelist. She has published over 25 crime novels, and is best known for her Will Trent Series and standalone title Pieces of Her (2018). Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into dozens of languages.

This guide is based on the 2025 William Morrow hardback edition.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include depictions of graphic violence, sexual violence, substance use, sexual content, child abuse, illness, emotional abuse, pregnancy loss, and death.

Plot Summary

On the Fourth of July, Madison Dalrymple and her best friend Cheyenne Baker go missing during the North Falls fireworks event. Police sheriff Gerald Clifton and his daughter, police deputy Emmy Clifton, immediately confer with their colleagues and townspeople about what happened. They discover Cheyenne’s bike mangled in the park near a large splotch of blood. However, they can’t find her phone or necklace.

Emmy is beside herself that the teenage girls have been kidnapped and fears that she and her colleagues won’t find them before they are dead. She is particularly worried about Madison. She is her best friend Hannah’s stepdaughter. Worse, Emmy saw Madison just before her disappearance and knew she needed to talk. Emmy dismissed her because she was distracted by a fight with her husband, Jonah Lang. At the end of the night, Emmy goes to see Hannah, revealing that she and Gerald haven’t found anything. A furious Hannah insists she never wants to see or talk to Emmy again.

Over the following days, Emmy and her team discover that Cheyenne and Madison were selling drugs and taking money from older men in exchange for sexual favors. They were desperate to run away from home, but got involved with the wrong people. The police determine that their school chorus teacher, Dale Loudermilk, has child sexual abuse material on his computer and arrest him. Then they learn that Emmy’s aunt Millie’s farm hand, Adam Huntsinger, has been seen interacting with the girls. Emmy believes Adam is guilty almost as soon as she interviews him. She and Gerald soon arrest him. Around this time, the girls’ bodies turn up in Millie’s pond.

Twelve years later, Adam is acquitted of his crimes and released from prison. The police and court have determined that Adam was in fact out of town—involved in another rape crime—at the time of Madison’s and Cheyenne’s deaths. However, North Falls residents are furious when he returns home. Gerald decides to use this opportunity to reopen Madison and Cheyenne’s case, known as the Broken Angels Case. Then he and Emmy learn that another local girl named Paisley Walker has gone missing, under almost the same circumstances as Madison and Cheyenne.

Emmy and Gerald race to the Huntsingers’ house, convinced Adam has attacked another young girl. Upon arrival, the North Falls townspeople lash out at Emmy and Gerald, blaming them for Adam’s acquittal. Paul, Madison’s father, shoots and kills Gerald.

Emmy goes to see Gerald at the funeral home. She is shocked when her supposedly deceased older sister Martha—now going by Jude Archer—arrives there, too. Jude explains that she never really died; that was Gerald’s story to get her out of town. She is now an FBI agent and wants to help Emmy solve the Paisley Walker case. Emmy reluctantly agrees.

Emmy and Jude work together to investigate Paisley’s disappearance. Meanwhile, they draw lines between her kidnapping and the Broken Angels Case. Jude urges Emmy to reexamine the police work she and her colleagues did years prior, insisting there must be another explanation.

Finally, Emmy and Jude realize that there was more than one man involved in Madison and Cheyenne’s deaths. Their investigations, clues, and interrogations lead them to Adam’s father, Walton Huntsinger. They discover that he has in fact been framing his son and was working with two other perpetrators to exploit and abuse young girls.

Back at the station, Emmy visits the Evidence Room and discovers a pile of faked documents associated with the Broken Angels Case. She realizes that her colleague Virgil Ingram was tampering with evidence all along. He appears in the room, and confesses to kidnapping and killing Madison and Cheyenne. He also admits that he was working with Walton and Dale and that he took Paisley. He threatens to kill Emmy, but she shoots and kills him first. Emmy recovers herself and races to Virgil’s house. She finds a barely breathing Paisley in Virgil’s barn. She calls an ambulance and saves her.

Emmy and Jude confer about the case. They talk about their family and pasts. Context clues imply that Emmy realizes the truth of who Jude is: her birth mother. Jude ran away from home and later showed up on her parents’ doorstep with a newborn baby, Emmy. Her parents took Emmy in but demanded that Jude leave. Jude is glad to be reunited with her daughter and Emmy implies that she forgives Jude for the past.