Pretty Girls (Karen Slaughter)

analyzed by Renee Decker

1. What is the genre?

Global—Thriller > Serial Killer

Secondary—Worldview > Disillusionment

2. What are the conventions and obligatory scenes for the genre?

Conventions

There must be a crime (perpetrators and victims, one or more of these: corpse, the assaulted or hostages): The story starts with reference to a crime - the abduction of a young girl and the search for her.  As the narrative continues, we learn about many other crimes and victims for which the antagonist is responsible.  The main victim that the story focuses on however is the Carroll family.  The older sister Julia was kidnapped, tortured and killed, the family left suffering the loss and the turmoil of searching for her.  The middle sister is attacked by the antagonist years after her sister's abduction, which causes a fight between her and her younger sister, who is dating the antagonist and results in the two not speaking to each other for twenty years.  The father is haunted the rest of his life by grief and a never-ending struggle to keep hope alive for his missing daughter, and then is eventually killed by the antagonist.  The middle sister is eventually caught by the antagonist again and we question until the end, whether she will survive.  And the youngest sister is lied to, watched and manipulated into a lonely life by the antagonist for twenty years.

MacGuffin (This is the Villain’s Object of Desire, what he or she wants): The antagonist's object of desire is to make money from "snuff porn," and although he presents that as his motivation, he also has a strong internal need to control, manipulate and terrorize people.

Investigative Red Herrings (seemingly revelatory false clues that mislead the Protagonist): There are several red herrings, with the most substantial focus placed on Adam Quinn, the antagonist's business partner in his "day job," the funds stolen from his architecture company, and the man in the mask profile, which turns out to be fake.  With respect to Adam Quinn, he sends Claire a threatening message demanding that she give him the files that Paul Scott recently worked on, and Claire is suspicious that he is involved in some way with the recordings on Paul's computer.  With respect to the stolen money, the FBI agent tells Claire about the stolen funds and she tries to figure out why Paul would steal a rather menial amount from the business when they had much more money themselves.  The stolen money ends up causing Paul to get caught with the videos, but has nothing to do with the actual crimes involved.  Finally, the image of the man in the mask gives Claire a false idea of the characteristics that might help her identify him, and provides much distraction throughout the story as she tries to figure out the identity of a person matching those faked attributes.  Paul has altered his appearance, so her efforts in identifying the man were fruitless, until the point she realizes that the images she has seen have been purposefully altered to prevent his identification. 

Making it Personal (The Villain needs the Hero to get the MacGuffin and thus must victimize the Hero to get what he or she wants):  There are three protagonists in this story, Julia’s two sisters, Claire and Lydia, and their father, Scott Carroll.  Each are victims of Paul as he purposefully sought to control, manipulate and terrorize the Carroll family.  Claire is a victim as the Villain has used the death of her sister to manipulate her into a marriage where she knows almost nothing about her husband, secretly killed her father to keep his secrets from her and caused Claire to ostracize her only remaining sister to keep Claire all to himself. He has essentially used Claire to fulfill his desire to control the Carroll family.  Scott Carroll is a victim, as Paul killed him, after revealing that he participated along with his father in killing Scott’s daughter. Lydia is a victim because she is sexually assaulted by Paul and then ostracized from her family when Paul convinces them Lydia lied about the attack, and then again when Paul abducts and tortures Lydia, then prepares to kill her.  

Clock (There is a limited time for the Hero to act; failing to act burns precious time): Claire is on a clock of unknown but decidedly short duration.  She has to get to Lydia before Paul kills her, but she also has to wait long enough that she convinces Paul that she retrieved the USB drive.  As a result, we feel the pressure of the clock most stringently towards the end, when Claire has had time to get the USB (according to the fake path that her mother help her convince Paul she took) and then has to force herself to act, rather than wait for someone else to help, in time to get to Lydia before Paul kills her.

Obligatory Scenes

An Inciting Crime indicative of a master Villain. There must be victims: The inciting crime of this story takes place prior to the present day telling, when the protagonists’ sister/daughter disappears and the family suspects she was abducted.  It picks up with the abduction of another victim, causing the two living protagonists to recall some of the horror they experienced when their sister disappeared.

Speech in Praise of the Villain: speech by a character, or a revelation, that praises the cunning/brilliance of the villain: The speech in praise of the villain convention is satisfied in speeches placed throughout the novel, praising Paul for taking care of Claire and for making her happy after it seemed that most people in her life were too busy to notice her.  The speeches occur frequently in the beginning of the novel, and then decrease as we learn of the extent of Paul's involvement in the videos.  The scenes that stand out as coming together to satisfy this obligatory scene are: 1) scene 6 (chapter 3) which occurs just after Paul’s funeral and describes the reason why Claire feel in love with Paul- he was caring, funny, and thought Claire was smart when no one else ever thought that about her; 2) scene 7 – in which Claire describes how Paul was handsome, funny and smart; 3) scene 21 – when Claire tells Lydia she learned what love really was from their parents and described when she knew she really loved Paul – when she realized that she could not live without him because of what he added to her life; 4) scene 26 – when Claire realizes that although Paul punched her, he also didn’t punch with his full force, sparing her any real harm; 5) scene 31 – when Claire remembers that Paul placed a pillow under her head, took off her shoes, and charged the Tesla for her, taking time that could have gotten him caught abducting Lydia, or allowed her to get away, in order to spare Claire some pain, discomfort and inconvenience; 6) scene 41 – Claire momentarily loses her nerve to shoot Paul, remembering how happy he once made her.  These scenes progressively get shorter in the duration and extent of praise for Paul, demonstrating Claire’s slow integration of the horrible things she has learned about him into her conception of his true character. 

The Hero/Protagonist becomes the Victim. A scene reveals that the Villain makes his crimes personal to the Hero and the Hero becomes the primary Victim: There are back to back scenes where it becomes clear the true nature of Paul’s victimization of the Carroll family.  The first is from Claire’s perspective in scene 37 when she finds a picture of Julia in the barn, dead, with the sheriff responsible for looking for her standing next to her body, along with Paul’s customer list, thus confirming that Paul knew and participated in hiding what really happened to Julia, and likely sought Claire out because of her family ties to Julia.  The second scene is from Lydia’s perspective, scene 38, when Paul describes his involvement in Julia’s death and that he killed their father after making him watch the recording of it.  These two scenes reveal that Paul intended to victimize the family and set the stage for the transition to the ending payoff where it is clear that Claire must find a way to rescue Lydia or she will be Paul’s next victim.

The Hero at the Mercy of the Villain. The core event of the Thriller, the All is Lost Moment when the Hero unleashes his or her gift: Each of the three protagonists have a "hero at the mercy of the villain" scene.  Lydia spends a great deal of time literally at the mercy of the antagonist, but the standout scene comes when she asks Paul to give her the Percocet.  At that point, she has already professed to giving up, but, hearing the story of her father's death, she decides she can no longer take the pain asks Paul to give her the drugs.  This request comes at great cost to Lydia's psychological power, as she knows that if she takes them, after struggling to stay sober for twenty years, she has truly given up on the idea of escaping.  Although not as poignant as Lydia's, Claire's hero at the mercy of the villain scene comes when she tells Paul she has the USB drive and he tells her to get back to his parents’ house as quickly as she can, with the advice that the longer she takes the worse it might get for Lydia.  She asks to speak to Lydia and Lydia tells her she is already dead.  At that moment, Claire is at the mercy of Paul because he has the power to and tells her that he will exercise that power, to do the one thing he has left to hurt her with and that is to kill another one of her sisters.  Sam Carroll's hero at the mercy of the villain scene is “off stage."  We get glimpses of what the scene looked like from Paul's retelling of it and from what one of the cops and Claire's mother tell her about it.  That scene occurs when Paul shows Sam the videos of Julia being tortured before he stages his suicide.  

False Ending (there must be two endings): This in one obligatory scene that is not fully satisfied in this story.  There is no point at the end where Paul rises up to go after Claire and Lydia one more time.  He is shot by Claire and never comes back with any force after that.  He does try to convince Claire to save him, but there is no resolution where we think that the story is over, before that happens.  Although I do not see a false ending, the false ending to Paul's life actually comes much earlier in the story, when Paul shows up at his parents’ old house, punches Claire and abducts Lydia.  Although it is not a false ending, because it comes in the middle, I do think it provides the reader with some satisfaction of this obligatory scene.  We are not expecting Paul to attack from beyond the grave, so while we may expect the man in the mask to show up, or an attack by Adam Quinn, the reader is shocked in the same sort of way that a false ending creates, when Paul appears to carry out a final attack on the Carroll family.

3. What is the point of view?

The story is told from the point of view of three characters, Claire Scott and Lydia Delgado, the younger sisters of Julia Carroll who was abducted at the age of 19, and Scott Carroll, Julia's father.   Claire and Lydia's points of view are told in free indirect style, while Scott's is in first person, with the narrative device being that his story is told from a reading of his journal entries. 

4. What are the objects of desire?

External/Conscious: Claire's external object of desire is to find out whether the tapes her husband has are real and if so, to save anyone that can be saved. Lydia's external object of desire is to help her sister but make sure the two do not go too far and get themselves and Lydia's family in the path of danger.  Scott's internal object of desire is to find out what happened to his daughter, with the hope of finding her alive.

Internal/Subconscious: Claire's internal object of desire is to be loved and feel special to someone (something she was deprived of when her family was pulled into distress over their missing daughter and sister).  Lydia's internal object of desire is to re-solidify her relationship with her sister and mother.  Scott's internal object of desire is to find a way to move forward after his daughter's abduction and likely death.

5. What is the controlling idea / theme?

Life is preserved when the protagonists use their own intelligence, ingenuity and knowledge about the victims and potential perpetrators to solve the crime or mystery, rather than relying on others, including the professionals responsible for doing so, to do it for them.

6. What is the beginning hook, middle build and ending payoff?

Beginning Hook: When Claire Scott finds herself suddenly devastated by the death of her husband of nearly twenty years, then horrified to find a snuff porn video on his computer, she is faced with the decision of whether to look further into his personal files to make sure the video was only a spectator hobby or to leave the files alone in case she finds something worse, she decides she needs answers and finds more videos that look real, and after being told by the police chief, whom she does not trust, that the videos are fake, she calls her estranged sister to see if she thinks the girl in the video looks like the missing Anna Kilpatrick.

Middle Build: When Claire and Lydia go to investigate Paul's parents' house that he kept secret, Paul shows up, takes Lydia and punches Claire in the face later calling Claire to tell her to get him the USB drive or else,  Claire must decide whether to save Lydia herself or bring in the police and FBI, she decides she cannot trust anyone else and when Lydia tells her that she is already dead, Claire devises a plan to kill Paul to save her sister.

Ending Payoff: Claire sets the house on fire as a ploy to drive Paul out, where the plan is to shoot him to save her sister, however after she injures him, the fire has spread to a point where she fears losing her anyway and Claire and Lydia have to claw their way to freedom from inside the garage, after which Claire learns that Paul knows where Julia's body is and has to decide whether to kill her husband and finally end the brutalization of her family or to keep him alive to find out where the body of her missing sister is located, when Claire suddenly figures out where Julia's body is on her own and decides to shoot Paul, after which her and Lydia find Julia's body in the well Claire painted for her husband as an anniversary gift, and the two finally receive some closure to her death.

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