Review of Her Last Breath by Linda Castillo

In Her Last Breath, the fifth novel in Linda Castillo's award-winning Kate Burkholder series, Amish Deacon Paul Borntrager is returning home one rainy evening with his three young children behind Sampson, the sorrel horse he has painstakingly trained for buggy duty. Without warning, a pickup truck roars out of a blind intersection and smashes into the buggy, killing Paul, the horse, and two of his children. The truck does not stop, and precious minutes pass before the police are called.

When the dying Paul greets Painter's Mill police chief Kate Burkholder by name, she realizes with horror that this is the family of her closest childhood friend, Mattie. When Kate tore herself away from her Amish family and community as a young woman, beautiful Mattie had stayed in the Plain Life, married Paul, and bore his children.

While Holmes County has jurisdiction, Sheriff Rasmussen is quite relieved to have Kate notify Mattie of the accident. Historically, the Amish are skeptical of police and uninterested in retribution through the legal system. They believe that everything that happens comes from God, and their sometimes terrible duty is to accept, forgive, and remain faithful. After the horrible and very real slaughter at the Nickel Mines Amish School, families of the victims visited and comforted the family of the shooter, publicly announced their forgiveness of the crime, and even set up a charitable fund for his wife and children.

Before driving to Mattie's place, Kate stops to pick up the Amish Bishop, with whom she has a long and stormy history. When he answers her late night knock with an urgent "What is wrong?" Kate can only burst into tears. Her professional composure recovered, she drives the bishop to Mattie's, then when Mattie's shock and grief are under control, takes both of them to the hospital, where David, Mattie's only surviving child, is already in surgery.

It was a curious accident scene. There were no skid marks from braking, and no debris from the vehicle except for a side-view mirror and part of a heavy-duty cotter pin. The vehicle must have blown through a stop sign at 80 miles an hour to have scattered the bodies and buggy debris so far. There was an impression of a large bolt in the wooden side of the buggy's door. After painstaking reconstruction, the police finally conclude that it had not been an accident, but deliberate murder. Was it a hate crime, or something personal?

In the meantime, a couple of boys playing in an abandoned grain elevator discovered something that could cause serious trouble for Kate and her family. Outside of her brother and sister, only her lover, Investigator John Tomasetti of the state police, knows her troubling secret.

Dr. Michael Armitage, from whose office Paul and the children were returning when they were killed, confirms that all three children had Cohen Syndrome, a genetic disorder that delays and distorts mental and physical development. It is rare, and found mostly in narrow gene pools. Mattie and Paul, both healthy themselves, must both be carriers. He also confirmed that it was usually Mattie, not Paul, who brought the children to their weekly appointments. From there, the story moves quickly to a breathtaking, if somewhat sketchy, conclusion that nearly solves all of Kate's problems forever––at the bottom of a lake!

Amish Funeral by Bill Coleman

This is the fifth in the author's Kate Burkholder series, but the first I have read. Consequently, I don't know if the body found in the old grain elevator is a surprise to followers of the series, but it added a whole new dimension, which remains unresolved, to the story. The story moved nonstop, and the histories of these two remarkable women and the secret burdens they each carry almost overshadowed the chilling murder mystery at times.

The book is written in the first person, from Kate's perspective, and in the present tense. While I often find this annoying in a novel, this one moved so fast that I quickly forgot about it. While I found the plot rather thin and improbable, the author offers a few fresh insights into this fascinating and secretive society in the setting of a truly heinous crime.

Note: I received a free review copy of Her Last Breath, which will be released by Minotaur Books on June 18, 2013. Portions of this review may appear on other sites under my user names there.

Review of Michael Koryta's The Silent Hour

The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta

The Silent Hour isn't one of those Michael Koryta gothic horrors or supernatural noirs that you read trembling under the bedcovers. Rather, it's the fourth book in his Lincoln Perry series, about a former Cleveland, Ohio police detective turned hardboiled private eye.

Lincoln, who narrates, is a skilled and relentless investigator. His partner in Perry and Pritchard Investigations, widowed ex-cop Joe Pritchard, has been in Florida for months, recovering from gunshot wounds and contemplating retirement. Lincoln is considering retirement too. He misses the companionship and advice of Joe, a naturally cautious man, who as a kid "probably did background checks on the neighbors before trick-or-treating at their houses." Money from a job Lincoln did for his ex-fiancée could remodel the gym he owns. He's tired of putting his girlfriend Amy in danger and hearing the security bar go across her apartment door as he leaves.

Is it, then, any wonder that when he receives a series of letters asking for help from convicted murderer Parker Harrison, Lincoln tosses them into the garbage? Months later, the persistent Harrison himself shows up at Lincoln's office. He doesn't want Lincoln to investigate the murder that sent him to prison, but the whereabouts of "kind, compassionate, beautiful" Alexandra Cantrell, who dreamed of helping released violent offenders reenter society. She and her husband Joshua developed a program that tried to connect parolees with nature at their special house in the woods, Whisper Ridge. Upon leaving prison, Harrison joined them there for a year. Then the Cantrells disappeared without a trace.

That was 12 years ago. Now, Harrison tells Lincoln, "I see you as a storyteller. You take something that's hidden from the world, and you bring it forward, give us answers to our questions, give us an ending. It's what you do, and you seem to be very good at it."

That's true. Lincoln takes the case and it isn't long before he's deeply disturbed. Carved beside the door at Whisper Ridge is a strange epitaph, "Whisper Ridge—Home to Dreams—November 6, 1992-April 27, 1996." He discovers that Joshua's skeleton was unearthed in Pennsylvania six months earlier, right before Harrison began writing him. In addition, one of the parolees died mysteriously shortly after leaving the Cantrells. It's clear that Harrison is not being open and honest. To make matters worse, Lincoln learns that Alexandra comes from a major Youngstown, Ohio mob family and her uncle, Dominic Sanabria, pays Lincoln an unwanted visit. Dominic states that he liked Joshua and says of the missing Alexandra, "Every family has their darling, and she is ours."

The dual nature of the characters makes Lincoln's investigation very challenging. Do-gooders Alexandra and Joshua have connections to the Sanabria mob. Although Harrison and the Cantrells' other parolees are murderers, they have stayed out of trouble since their release. How far can they be trusted? What about Dominic?

Lincoln wants nothing to do with an investigation that touches the Sanabria family. He continues, at the request of Pennsylvania cop Quinn Graham, working on Joshua's homicide, and Pittsburgh PI Ken Merriman, hired by Joshua's parents when he first disappeared 12 years earlier. Ken is reluctant to quit because he dreams of impressing his 14-year-old daughter. In some ways, Graham, Ken and other law enforcement officers interested in bringing down Dominic Sanabria are almost as troublesome for Lincoln as the criminals. They're jealous of their turf, hampered by a lack of resources and blinded by obsession. Lincoln can't entirely trust them either.

The case isn't solved before Joe's return from Florida, another murder and so many plot twists and double dealings that Lincoln's inquiries reminded me of a ball making its way through a pinball machine. It's no wonder Lincoln ponders his commitment to life as a PI.

The Silent Hour is an imaginative and beautifully constructed book about ambition and betrayal, broken dreams and new beginnings, and the crippling nature of obsession. Koryta obviously knows Cleveland. The prose is crisp but often lovely:

That night strips of coal-colored clouds skidded over a bright three-quarter moon, pushed by a spirited wind off the lake. I sat on the roof of my building and marveled at their speed, stared long enough that the lights and sounds of the street below faded and I was held by the rhythm of the clouds, by the vanishing and then resurfacing moon. If I looked long enough, it seemed I wasn't on the roof anymore, could instead be miles out at sea, nothing in sight but that moon and those clouds. 

Yeah, I'd had a bit to drink.

I cared about what happened to Koryta's complex characters. Lincoln, introduced in Tonight I Said Goodbye, is a classic shamus in the manner of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Since The Silent Hour was published in 2009, Koryta has written four stand-alone novels. I hope he'll give us another Lincoln Perry book soon.

What’s Amiss With the Amish?

As I go through my day, I have the pleasure of seeing what different sorts of books people are reading. Along the way, I get hints about what’s hot and what’s trendy. One of the recent trends that I have been noticing in the past year is the upsurge in the sub-genre of novels about the Amish. Much of what I see being read are stories about plucky heroines living through some sort of life-affirming change. Hmmm. Naturally, my interests being somewhat murkier, I have plenty of questions for these readers.

None of the subjects of my third degrees actually want to be Amish; they just admire what they think they know about that way of life. Mainly, they are interested in books they can rely on not to be filled with gore or blue language. They usually can expect not to run into graphic violence or sexual behavior in the Amish books they're reading. The Amish culture is tantalizingly unknown to most of the readers as well. They are intrigued by the culture of a people that sets itself apart from the mainstream in dress, language and lifestyle. This type of novel is known as "bonnet fiction." I wondered if there were murder mysteries in this category. There were.

One of the series that I looked into, read and liked was P. L. Gaus's Michael Branden series. It begins with Blood of the Prodigal, which takes place in Ohio, where many of the Amish-flavored books are centered. The Amish (or “plain people") and the English (or "vain ones") share a county. Most of the time the Amish keep to themselves and solve their own problems, but when a 10-year-old boy is missing, the local police are called in at the behest of Bishop Eli Miller. A local pastor, Caleb Troyer, and college professor Michael Branden help the Sheriff investigate.

In Broken English, the next in the series, the violence escalates a little as felon Jesse Sands, after serving a sentence of 25 years in a New Jersey prison, is released and quickly heads across Pennsylvania and West Virginia towards Ohio. Behind him he leaves a wide swath of murder and destruction as he exacts a harsh measure of revenge on every innocent who helps him. On a rainy night in Millersburg, he looks for shelter and for something to steal, for he is running out of money. He is surprised by a young woman who has time to dial 911 before she is shot and killed by Sands. Sands is accosted outside the house as he leaves and is arrested.

Later the girl’s father, David Hawkins, asks to see the prisoner and his wish is granted. He has come to forgive Sands in the Amish way. After Hawkins tells Sands that he forgives him, Sands whispers something that makes Hawkins go berserk and nearly throttle the murderer before he is restrained. Hawkins manages to take down the deputy who restrained him and then he leaves. Now no one can find him.

David Hawkins was once a soldier who was trained to kill by the U.S. military. In order to gain some measure of tranquility he contacted an Amish friend of his and did what was necessary to join the Amish community. He had been among the "plain people" for seven years when the tragedy of his daughter's murder struck him. A basic part of the Amish belief is that vengeance belongs to God and He will deal with it in time. Everybody is afraid that David has cracked and reverted to his old way of life, but David’s closest friends have grim faith that he is still abiding by the Amish pacifist ways.

A few days later, another murder takes place and a reporter who had been looking into David Hawkins’s background is found shot in the head. Now the sheriff is confident that David Hawkins has reverted to the military killer that he once was. Professor Michael Branden of the local college and Pastor Caleb Troyer are usually the sheriff’s allies, but now they feel there is more to this story and they begin to build a very different case.

Paul Louis Gaus lives in Wooster, Ohio, a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people reside. His knowledge of the "plain people" comes from exploring narrow blacktop roads and gravel lanes of the communities whose members live close to the "English" non -Amish people. There are seven books in this series so far.

Now, I have suggested that in Amish-themed stories there is likely to be less graphic violence. Well, that is definitely not the case in Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo.

While also taking place in bucolic areas of Ohio, the story begins with a flashback a description of the actions of a madman known as "The Slaughterhouse Killer" so graphic that is best read with your eyes averted. Unfortunately, what you miss on the first go-round is bound to pop up again and again for your edification. The lone survivor of that years-earlier series of brutal murders was Kate Burkholder, then a young Amish girl who left the faith and her home after the killings. Kate went into law enforcement in the city before returning to her home town of Painter’s Mill as Chief of Police. One snowy day, another body is found with all the hallmarks of a maniacal killing dealt by the Slaughterhouse Killer. Kate has to reconnect with her Amish family in order to solve this case before more girls are killed. In this novel, there is no respite from violence, four-letter words and the only sex is criminal. There are three novels in the Silence series; the next is Pray for Silence and new this year is Breaking Silence.

In a somewhat feminine homage to the movie Witness, Karen Harper has written a story that takes place in, where else, Ohio. Dark Harvest is about an Amish community under siege from an unknown foe. At first, they were targeted by mean-spirited pranks such as the spray painting of quilts hanging on clotheslines. The leaders of the community do not report these things to the authorities because they believe that they are under God’s protection. But when some of the pranks become more dangerous and the lives of children may be at stake, Luke Brand, the son of the ailing current bishop asks the local authorities for help. Into the community comes Kat Lindley, masquerading as Luke’s fiancée. Kat is a policewoman recuperating from an injury and now she is on hand to observe whether the pranksters are local militia who are anti-everything, local carpenters who dislike the Amish carpenters or, even worse, ostensible friends to the Amish. The deaths of two bishops escalate the fears in the community and Kat finds herself in some dangerous situations before she is able to hone in on the culprits. The excellent cooking of her Amish hosts is one perk of the job that is changing the way she looks at herself–but not in a mirror of course, since that is forbidden vanity. This story is the second in a trilogy, bookended by Dark Road Home and Dark Angel, and Harper has started a second Amish series featuring an artist who paints murals on barns in her Amish community.

Most of the stories I have read include a good dollop of Amish culture, but some of them really gloss over the hard parts, or parts you may not agree with, such as the limited education allowed. Still, there is usually a good look at some realities we among the "English" would find hard to adjust to. Hardships from my point of view would be the underwear, or lack thereof (no bras), the eighth-grade end to school, and outhouses. Worst-case scenario would be little light to read by and no time or need to read in any case. No, I would not make it in this life.

The Amish do have groups with varying strictness about certain aspects of their culture; no two sects are exactly the same, except in the basic religious beliefs. But, as one character puts it, we are human too. This aspect is dealt with by the Rumspringa, which allows adolescents a period of time to cut loose without condemnation, so that they can then make a decision to leave the community or choose a life commitment to the faith (as most do).

We all know from current events that despite the efforts a community makes to preserve a way of life, evil people and evil deeds break down the walls. So murder mysteries and crime stories revolving around a reclusive pacifist sect or culture are bound to be written, read and enjoyed for many different reasons. Human frailty spares no one and that is the grist of fiction writing. I avoided reading that nonfiction book about the true crime murders in the Amish schoolhouse. Fiction I can handle; reality, not so much.