The Strength and Power of Collective Rage
In her newest thriller, THE COLLECTIVE, bestselling author Alison Gaylin again visits the theme of family but in a darkly sinister way.
Someone killed Camille Gardner’s 15-year-old daughter, Emily, after a fraternity party. They left her in the cold to freeze to death. Before she died three days after they found her, Emily told Camille that a boy named Harris Blanchard raped and left her.
Harris belongs to a wealthy family who went on the offensive, giving an interview to Rolling Stone magazine claiming Emily falsely accused their son. Although the case went to trial, public opinion was already on Harris’s side, and the jury acquitted him.
Now, five years later, Camille still vows to get justice for her daughter.
It’s a powerful and timely story that Gaylin says stemmed from watching the news.
“I’ve read so many stories about parents who lose their children to a killer who goes unpunished,” she says. “As a mother, I always wonder how I would survive something like that—I’m not sure I would. That anguish, combined with the anger, fear, and powerlessness most of us felt at the height of the pandemic, inspired me to write THE COLLECTIVE.”
Read the rest of my review and interview with Alison Gaylin in The Big Thrill.
