Sworn to Silence

Author: Linda Castillo
Genre: Mystery
Grade: B

Kate Burkholder is sheriff of a quiet rural community that includes a small population of Amish. In fact, she was once Amish before her life was marred by tragedy and she chose to leave the church. Back home after a few years of wild living (and then the requisite police training) she is able to bridge the gap between the peacefully coexisting "English" and Amish. Most of the time her hardest job is dealing with traffic fatalities or stopping someone's cows from causing said fatalities. So when one of her deputies on a routine cattle roundup comes across a body everyone's initial speculation is car accident. But pretty quickly that changes . . . .

John Tomesati has lived through a horrific tragedy of his own and is now just coasting through his life waiting for BCI (The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation) to fire him. When he is placed on a screw-up-and-you-are-gone-without-a-pension assignment to Kate's small town of Painters Mill he is surprised to find himself coming back to life.

Together the two of them have to face a horrific ghost from Kate's past. A ghost that is killing towns people at a rather alarming rate. . .

This is a good but not exceptional thriller. I liked the idea of an Amish raised police chief but aside from the fact that Kate knows the language and customs that factor is never explored. On a personal level, I was rather stunned by how John and Kate's pasts didn't even cause my eyebrows to raise. Guess I felt the whole thing was so foreshadowed that I felt like there was just no real surprise when it finally happened.

Last, but for sure not least, I was disappointed with the end. One of the secondary characters in the book has just found out something huge, the whole town should have been shaken by the reveal of the who the killer was but none of that was dealt with. I've read that Castillo plans to make a series of this (sigh, does no one just write a book anymore?) but really, I felt that the resolution of those issues deserved to be dealt with in this book.

Overall a good mystery read though.

Tea: Much as the Amish hate the English ;-) I have to recommend a pot of London Fruit & Herb Tea. Since it is fall let's go with Apple and Cinnamon Twist. But my REAL recommendations are what accompany it. I am addicted to Essenhaus extra wide noodles which can be boiled in chicken broth and taste like fat dumplings. Utterly yummy!

maggie b.