Marilyn's Mystery Reads

The chief of police in Painters Mills, Ohio holds what seems to be dual citizenship.  Kate Burkholder was born into the town’s Amish community but left it to become, as they say in Pennsylvania Dutch, an Englischer.  That term, used both for men and women, simply denotes anyone who doesn’t follow the Amish way.  But Kate, having grown up as Amish, both speaks their language and understands their way of life better than most Englischers can.

Thirty-five years ago, there was a horrific murder in the town.  Kate was just a child then, but she knows the tragic story of the Hochstetlers.  Four masked people broke into the family’s farmhouse looking for money from the family’s business; it was believed that the family kept their cash in the house because of the Amish distrust of banks.  The intruders killed the family’s father and abducted the mother, and a lighted lantern left on the basement steps burned the four younger children to death.  Only the teenage son Billy, who was running after the getaway car carrying his mother, escaped with his life.

Now, all these years later, four respected members of Painters Mills have been receiving threatening notes.  Dale Michaels is the first to die, having received these messages:  I know what you did; I know what all of you did; Meet me or I go to the police; Hochstetler farm. 1 a.m.  Come alone.  When Dale arrives at the farm at the appointed hour, he sees the figure of Wanetta Hochstetler, the family’s mother who was abducted and assumed dead for thirty-five years.  And then Dale is shot to death.

Kate Burkholder didn’t know Dale Michaels, nor did she expect three people to be murdered within a week in her town.  What could tie these victims together?  And why had each victim received notes similar to Dale’s?

Kate is undergoing her own personal trial with her live-in partner, John Tomasetti.  His wife and two daughters were killed three years earlier as retribution for arrests he made as an FBI agent, and now one of the convicted men has been released on a technicality.  John can’t put this tragedy behind him, and his desire for revenge is threatening the relationship he has with Kate.

Linda Castillo continues the exciting Kate Burkholder series with this latest entry.  Reading about the Amish community in  Painters Mills is, for most of us, like taking a trip to a foreign country.  There are many things that set the members of the group apart from the majority–living without electricity, modest dress, traveling in buggies, ending education at the close of the eighth grade.  But readers can easily relate to their emotions and love of family.  As the late author Maya Angelou put it, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”  Ms. Castillo proves this once again in the outstanding The Dead Will Tell.

You can read more about Linda Costello at this web site.

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