By Ande Jacobson
Linda Castillo’s eighth Kate Burkholder novel is Among the Wicked. This time, Kate goes undercover back into the plain life. After Rachel Esh, a fifteen-year-old Amish girl, is found frozen to death in the woods near a small rural New York town, Ohio BCI agents John Tomasetti and Lawrence Bates along with Frank Betancourt of the BCI division of the New York State Police kind of ambush Kate in her office. They need her help. Because of her background, they want her to go undercover and pose as an Amish woman to get to know the community and find out what’s really happening there. The circumstances surrounding the girl’s death are suspicious, and it’s not the first strange occurrence in the community since Eli Schrock, the new bishop, came to town. The community is more isolated than most Amish communities, and something just doesn’t seem right. Kate knows the language and the life from her upbringing, so she’s in the perfect position to infiltrate and help figure out what’s happening. After they give her an overview of the case, they conference in the local sheriff, Dan Suggs, to get a more complete picture of the suspicious things happening, although he really doesn’t know much more than what they lay out.
In the meeting, John seems on board, but he is not. Once they get home, John tries to convince Kate not to take the assignment, but she is adamant that she’s the only one who can do it, and she wants to help. After a lot of back and forth out of concern for her safety, John ultimately relents, but he’s not happy about it.
Things move quickly, and once Kate gets to the town, she’s put up in a dreary trailer without electricity or adequate heat in the middle of a New York winter. She knew that going back to the plain life would be tough, but this seems tougher than it needs to be. She also has no transportation initially, but she eventually gets a scooter that helps some when the snow isn’t too thick. She needs to meet the people and effectively join the community to find out what’s happening. Like most Amish, the community is weary of any outsiders, especially the non-Amish, or as they refer to them, the Englischers.
It’s not long before Kate makes a few friends and, as seems to be her bent, a few enemies. The people of the community are understandably weary of strangers, even Amish ones, but her cover story is that she’s a recent widow who has grown dissatisfied with her community in Ohio because she finds it too lenient and heard about their bishop who holds more tightly to the Ordnung. Along the way, she joins a sewing circle at the local quilting shop, and while she initially befriends the waitress at the diner who holds more than a few secrets, that relationship quickly gets a bit rocky. Kate asks a lot of questions, and that raises suspicions. Despite ruffling a few feathers, she quickly determines that most of the community seems afraid of the new bishop, but very few will speak out against him in any way. She then pushes, and has a dangerous personal encounter with the bishop when she goes to meet with him privately. He’s not very subtle as he drugs her and attempts to assault her. Fortunately, she doesn’t get a big dose of whatever he drugs her with, and she manages to get away before anything really bad happens. That at least confirms for her that the guy isn’t really a bishop, but he is a predator. What it takes her longer to figure out is what’s really happening, and who all are involved.
This story leans heavily on the practices of a strict Amish community. Part of that practice, particularly in an old order Amish community, is to follow the bishop unquestioningly. A bishop in such a community has a lot of power, and someone with nefarious intentions can easily abuse that power and cause a lot of harm. Before long, people start getting hurt, and not in minor ways, especially if they’ve gotten too close to Kate.
When Kate ultimately solves the case, there’s a nasty twist that shocks her to her core, and she isn’t able to save everyone. In addition to some serious injuries suffered by the community while she’s investigating, there are additional murders before the end along with a conspiracy far beyond what she or the BCI agents suspected going into the case. And of course she ends up in yet another life-threatening situation that requires her being rescued when the case breaks wide open.
When the story really gets going, it’s hard to put down as the action becomes nonstop. Eventually though, Kate solves the case, and she survives, battered, bruised, and chagrined that she didn’t see the signs for the most shocking part of the case earlier, but there really was no way for her to do so. As it is, she solves the case relatively quickly considering what she’s up against. And some time after it’s over, she receives a precious gift from the women of the sewing circle showing that even though she had to deceive them for her cover, they still care deeply for her. It’s not clear if they’ll return in a future story, but Castillo leaves open that possibility.
Although most of the story takes place in New York, there are still some happenings back in Painters Mill. Kate’s home team includes:
- Mona Kurtz – the night shift police dispatcher
- Lois Monroe – the day shift dispatcher
- Jodie Metzger – the newly hired second shift dispatcher
- J. Banks – the youngest police officer on the team
- Rupert “Glock” Maddox – a former Marine and Kate’s most experienced officer
- Chuck “Skid” Skidmore – another veteran police officer
- Ludwig Coblentz, the local coroner and physician
- Roland “Pickles” Schumacker – a retired officer who serves as an auxiliary officer and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to any case
- John Tomasetti – a BCI officer and Kate’s boyfriend
The primary Kate Burkholder series includes:
- Sworn to Silence (2009)
- Pray for Silence (2010)
- Breaking Silence (2011)
- Gone Missing (2012)
- Her Last Breath (2013)
- The Dead Will Tell (2014)
- After the Storm (2015)
- Among the Wicked (2016)
- Down a Dark Road (2017)
- A Gathering of Secrets (2018)
- Shamed (2019)
- Outsider (2020)
- Fallen (2021)
- The Hidden One (2022)
- An Evil Heart (2023)
- The Burning (2024)
- Rage (2025)
There are also a few Kate Burkholder novellas beyond the primary series, but they are side stories and break from the formula and tone of the primary series though still involve Kate and company.
References:
Sworn to Silence, by Linda Castillo
Pray for Silence, by Linda Castillo
Breaking Silence, by Linda Castillo
Gone Missing, by Linda Castillo
Her Last Breath, by Linda Castillo
The Dead Will Tell, by Linda Castillo
After the Storm, by Linda Castillo
Among the Wicked, by Linda Castillo
A Good Reed Review 