Fallen
Fallen is thirteenth in a long-running and popular mystery series featuring Kate Burkholder. Kate is Chief of Police in Painters Mill, a small Ohio township (population 5,300) in the heart of Amish farm country. Kate grew up in an Amish family herself, but left the fold at eighteen. After studying criminal justice and becoming a police officer in big-city Columbus, she was invited back to Painters Mill to head their small police force.
Kate is called to investigate a murder at a local motel: a woman has been viciously beaten to death. Kate is shocked to realize she knows the victim. Rachael Schwarz, seven years younger than Kate, grew up in one of the strictest Old Order Amish families in the community, but was always rebellious.
As a teen, Kate babysat Rachael occasionally. She knew the girl as a rowdy rule-breaker, “the only girl I’d ever met who was worse at being Amish than me.” Kate later lost track of Rachael, but knows she left the community as a teenager. Rachael has since written a tell-all book about Amish life,, one that was not well-received by other Amish in the community, though it’s stocked in the local bookstore and visitors continue to buy it.
But now Rachael is back—and has been violently murdered. As far as Kate is able to discover, nobody was expecting Rachael in Painters Mill, or knew she had arrived in town. But someone obviously knew. And the killer must have been driven by strong emotion, continuing the frenzied beating even after she was dead.
Do the roots of Rachael’s death lie in the present, or in long-buried secrets from the past? Kate needs to find out who Rachael has been in contact with, and what strands of her life could have led to this violent result.
The suspense ratchets up as Kate and her team dig into Rachael’s life, and Kate herself faces extreme danger as the final climax reaches a peak.
Originally from Ohio where her Amish thrillers are set, Linda Castillo knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer. (She wrote a first novel when she was thirteen.) She's published thirty books for three New York publishing houses and has won numerous nominations and awards from Romance Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. The first novel in the Kate Burkholder series, Sworn to Silence, was made into a TV movie in 2013 called An Amish Murder, starring Neve Campbell.
Linda now ives in Texas with her husband. She's currently at work on another thriller set in Amish Country.
[Click here to sign up to my book club,, to get periodic updates on my writing journey, along with notices of new book reviews when I post them.]