Book Review

Vigilantism is not the way to go

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s tenth Kate Burkholder novel is A Gathering of Secrets. This time the Amish community goes full vigilante trying to right a horrible wrong. The prologue begins with the suicide of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood with her whole life ahead of her, though it takes some time to link it to an even bigger wrong in the community. The story begins in earnest six months after the suicide with a dramatic barn fire. It takes some doing, but the authorities eventually identify the one victim from the fire, a young Amish man just finishing his rumspringa. By all accounts, the young man was a pillar of the community. Initially, everyone Chief Kate Burkholder and her team talk with sing his praises saying what a tragedy it is that he died, how hard-working he was, and how nice and helpful he was. Despite the praises, Kate senses there’s more to the story of how and why Daniel Gingerich died in that fire. The investigation shows that his death wasn’t an accident. He was locked in the tack room with no way out when the fire was set. The big questions are why anyone would do something so horrific, and who was involved? Continue reading →

Childhood impressions stick around

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s ninth Kate Burkholder novel is Down a Dark Road. This time, Kate finds herself face-to-face with an old childhood friend in a desperate situation. The Prologue starts out two years earlier detailing the commission of a horrific crime. Kate’s childhood friend, Joseph King, was tried, convicted, and sent to prison for the crime of brutally murdering his wife, Naomi. Joseph was Kate’s neighbor for a time during their childhood. She and her siblings were close to Joseph and his family enjoying various summer adventures together. Kate really liked Joseph, and it was reciprocal, although neither expressed anything more than youthful friendship at the time. As a kid, Joseph was responsible, imaginative, and had an easy, carefree manner. Everyone liked him. That all changed when his father died in an accident when he was a teenager. He struggled with that loss, became somewhat distant, and the family moved away to be closer to extended family. Kate hadn’t thought about him for many years until she gets a call from the deputy warden at Mansfield Correctional Institution notifying her that Joseph has escaped and is at large. Continue reading →

The dangers of being on the inside

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

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. Continue reading →

Dangers abound from nature and from man

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s seventh Kate Burkholder novel is After the Storm. In a sense, this book feels like a brief respite from the shocking crimes that Castillo has brought forth in the series so far, at least early on. Of course, when Kate Burkholder is involved things get complicated rather quickly. The book starts out with a celebration with Kate and John enjoying the company of Kate’s family for a change. Before the afternoon is out, a massive storm and tornado descends upon the little town of Painters Mill. Some areas are hit harder than others, and Kate and John attempt to help where they can. In the immediate aftermath, they attempt to rescue a young woman and her infant from a mobile home that has been ravaged by the storm. Another part of the cleanup involves a troop of Boy Scouts cleaning out the remains of a barn that was a storm casualty when they discover some bones. Continue reading →

Criminal acts can haunt multiple generations

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s sixth Kate Burkholder novel is The Dead Will Tell. This time, Castillo takes readers on a different kind of journey. It still heavily involves the Amish community, and the crimes are serious involving a mystery that at first appears to be almost supernatural. It’s not, but that makes the perpetrator even more disturbing.

The book starts in the past, introducing readers to the Hochstetler family. One fateful night, a horrific crime that wasn’t planned takes place. The planned crime was supposed to be a quick robbery, and nobody was supposed to get hurt. As with many Amish families, the Hochstetlers kept a large amount of money in their home, proceeds from their furniture business. The eldest son, fourteen-year-old Billy, was bragging about their practice one day to a local Englischer teen trying to sound cool. The other boy then tells his friends about what Billy told him. What was initially just joking around became a plot that went horribly wrong. Instead of just taking the money and getting out, the intruders ended up killing the father, trapping the kids (all five of them) in the basement, and kidnapping the mother. As a further complication, the house catches fire from a lantern, though it takes some time before the cause of the fire is revealed. Billy is the only survivor. He’s taken in by the Yoders, another Amish family who adopts him, and he changes his name to Hoch Yoder to keep some remnant of his original surname intact. Continue reading →

Sociopaths can come from anywhere

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s fifth Kate Burkholder novel is Her Last Breath. Once again, Castillo dives deeply into the Amish way of life as tragedy strikes a young family. Paul Borntrager is coming home late one evening from a doctor’s appointment with his three young children when their buggy is hit by a speeding vehicle. The collision is catastrophic, and Paul and two of the children are killed at the scene. The only survivor is his eldest son, although it’s touch and go for a while as he too suffers life-threatening injuries in the crash. The buggy is completely destroyed, and so begins a grisly case that uncovers a truly disturbing plot that takes some time to unravel. Continue reading →

The demons within

A Good Reed Review Book Review , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Linda Castillo’s fourth Kate Burkholder novel is Gone Missing which picks up where the last one left off and gives readers another wild ride through the Amish community. While the story starts with a tragedy from the past, the suicide of a troubled Amish teen, it delves into a dark corner of the Amish community when fundamentalism goes awry although that doesn’t become clear until late in the story. This time, Kate is asked to join an investigation a little farther from home when a number of Amish teens have gone missing over a period of years. There are numerous cases that on the surface appear to have no connection other than the missing are all Amish teens, but there’s a very dark secret at the core of the case that only with Kate’s help can an expanded team from several counties and the famed BCI eventually crack. Of course the crucial break in the case is Kate’s doing, and once again almost becomes the last thing she does. Continue reading →

Monsters in the dark

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Breaking Silence is the third book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series, and it’s another fast-paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns. This one again exposes some of the ills plaguing the local Amish community. To start, both parents and a visiting uncle are found in a manure pit by their four children. There’s a frantic attempt by Kate and company to rescue the victims, but by the time they eventually get the people out of the pit, none survive. Two were already dead, and the third was too far gone to save. Kate and team initially think an accident caused them to fall into the pit. Noxious gases that emanate from the pit can collect in an enclosed space that isn’t properly ventilated and that can cause someone to lose consciousness or worse. Their initial theory is that one of the men was overcome by the gases and fell into the pit. They think the other two suffered the same fate as they tried to rescue the first man. Further investigation shows that wasn’t the case, and that at least one of the men was struck in the head before he either fell or was pushed into the pit. So begins a grueling investigation to determine who would commit such a heinous crime leaving four Amish children orphaned. Continue reading →

How to catch a sociopath

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Pray for Silence is the second book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series. This one picks up where the first one left off, and Kate and her team are again faced with a horrible crime against an Amish family in the fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill. This time, an entire family is brutally murdered, and it’s up to the Painters Mill PD, led by Chief Kate Burkholder, to stop the assailants from continuing their spree. For a quiet little town, the murder rate appears to be rivaling that of that quaint fictional Maine village of Cabot Cove, but instead of an amateur sleuth like Jessica Fletcher, Kate is a professional crime fighter. She and her team are faced with seven victims from the Plank family, hardworking Amish farmers with a passel of kids ranging from a toddler to older teens. Continue reading →

Quiet can be deceptive

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Sworn to Silence is the first book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series and was first released in 2009. Kate is the chief of police in the quaint, fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill, a small, rural community. About a third of the town’s residents are Amish, and the rest are what the Amish refer to as English, or non-Amish. They had coexisted for centuries until a series of brutal murders occurred. Since that time, the Amish and the police suffer from mutual suspicion. The killer wasn’t caught, but eventually life went on, until, sixteen years later at the time of the current story the killings begin anew with the same signature. A lot changed in that time. For one thing, Kate lived through the first killing spree and has since harbored a secret. Although most Amish children commit to their church and community when they reach 18, Kate took a different path. Continue reading →