Booksology By Dennis Fischman
When a writer sets a mystery within a particular religious community, it takes a lot of attention to make the book succeed. The author must convey what it’s like to live in that community in a way that lets outsiders in. (For me, that’s one of the reasons to read the mystery: to learn about a way of life I wouldn’t have access to any other way. Knowing what’s normal there is a necessary step toward seeing what’s out of place, and therefore a clue to the mystery.)
Yet it’s tricky to make sure the portrayal is both accurate and, at the same time, respectful. A decent author doesn’t cater to the prurient interests of people who want to feel superior to the Hasidic Jews in Invisible City, or the Friends in Quaker Silence, but doesn’t sugarcoat those communities either.
The Kate Burkholder series, by Linda Castillo, manages those challenges – and provides thrilling reading in the process.
Kate grew up in an Amish community in a small town in Ohio. For reasons that become clear as you read this book, she left the town, the community, and the Amish life. But here she is, back there, as Chief of Police, and in Her Last Breath, the murders she has to investigate are those of the husband of her best friend growing up, Mattie Erb, and two of their three children – all killed in what is meant to look like a hit-and-run accident. But it is not accidental.
Kate and her department must question people inside the Amish community who tend to stick together and protect one another. They have to track down the vehicle used as the murder weapon using physical clues, and they have to figure out whether it was really the husband, Paul Borntrager, who was the intended victim. Or was it Mattie?
As if this weren’t enough to keep Kate (and us readers) occupied, there’s a trauma from her past that’s threatening to become public. If it does, it may mean the end of her police career. She and her lover, John Tomasetti of the Ohio Bureau of Investigation, have to figure out what to do about it. But John is pressing her to move in with him and make their relationship permanent, and if she doesn’t, it may mean the end of the best thing in her life.
I hope this intrigues you. I have to admit, the solution depends on a character not being what they seem, in a way that I struggled to believe. Also, I am not a fan of the scene where our heroine gets captured, beaten, and has to fight off the killer – but a lot of people find that kind of climactic scene adds to their enjoyment!
I first started reading this series back in 2016, which was already seven years after the first book, Sworn to Silence, appeared in print. Somehow, I never read this one, the fifth in the series. Returning to it was a pleasure. But you could pick this one up and read it independently, because Linda Castillo makes sure to fill you in about everything you need to know.
And if you like it: well, there are sixteen books in the series, and a seventeenth due out in 2025. You can return to the Amish community in Painters Mill, Ohio, again and again.
