Wednesday, April 13, 2016

"Sworn to Silence" by Linda Castillo

There is good *and* evil in all societies, including the Amish community.  Were you surprised that Kate and her family chose to keep the secret of Daniel Lapp rather than reporting the crime through the law.  Is the law different for the Amish community?




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The writing was "G" for gory but well written. The content was troubling. The locale brought to mind a movie called "Witness" which was about Pennsylvania Dutch. This story was a fairy tale compared to "Sworn to Silence". The characters were very well described, warts included.

The explicit descriptions of the murdered people were a bit much. Those paragraphs sounded like they came from a course book for pre-med or a medical examiner's study course. The torture paragraphs were terrible. For some reason Chapter 15 gave me tears in my eyes. I don't remember why and I won't look again to see why.

The main character Kate appeared to be a tough cookie. She went through a lot but Pennsylvania Dutch are a tough people and resent any outside intervention unless they changed lately. As soon as she left the family, her story should have been told to authorities. Shunning of, and by her family would have been a punishment.

The characters were well described - mutual loyalty of Kate and her staff was apparent and probably saved her life.

I didn't have any idea of who the killer was until Kate becomes suspicious about some of his behavior. Then Detrick became very close suddenly with the town leaders who were undermining Kate's investigation. At the right time he pushed for her job. Then he was in position to know all priority clues.

I was very annoyed that the author did not let us know about Glock's baby and Kate's sister's baby. The book needed two reason for us to be hopeful even if it was fiction.

Anonymous said...

I was immediately pulled into "Sworn to Silence." It was the only time in my life that I had such a visceral reaction on reading a mystery that I cried. It was graphic but without being so, I wouldn't have felt the same way, i.e., utterly terrified for Kate Burkholder!

I can only imagine that some people weren't too pleased reading it for book discussion. But one can't please all the people all time....

I just finished "Breaking Silence" and have the next two books in the series!