BOOK REVIEW: Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

Sworn to Silence is the first book in the Chief Kate Burkholder series by Linda Castillo. This book was brought to my attention by FantasyFaction’s recommendation service by connecting it to other books I had previously read (I think it was to one of the Karin Slaughter books). The Kate Burkholder books are set in Northern Ohio, in Amish country, and the eponymous character is a former member of the local Amish community of Painter’s Creek, a town of under 5,000 inhabitants. Kate speaks Pennsylvania Dutch and is the small town’s chief of police. However Painter’s Creek’s chief law enforcement officer is hiding a pretty dramatic secret in her past involving the (probably !?) justified killing of a guy who raped her as a teenager. The fact that a series of gruesome murders ended soon after those events is even more important to the plot of Sworn to Silence than Kate’s secret because now the murders have resumed after a 15-year hiatus and Kate is perplexed to figure out how the events of her tormented past and the bloody present are linked.

It’s a great premise and Kate is an interesting combination of discrepancies. A female police chief of a small town, a former member of a local religious community who has been formally excommunicated from interacting with her own family members who live nearby. The primary strengths of this book are Kate and the impressively rapid pace of the plot. After no activity for 15 years, three horribly mutilated bodies are discovered in less than a week. Another minor strength is the inclusion of a Black male sidekick (called “Glock) who has a good professional relationship with Kate. One of my qualms about even starting the Burkholder series was my belief that the lack of diversity due to the setting would make it hard for me to connect with the characters and Glock helped assuage those concerns.

The primary weakness of the book is the excessively gory nature of the crimes and the inclusion of a romantic element for Kate both of which seems problematic and gratuitous. In fact, Kate herself is not without issues. She displays bad judgment multiple times and its hard to be sympathetic to her “might makes right” policing philosophy combined with a penchant for expediency over compliance. I’m not completely convinced I’ll continue reading other books in the series, despite the fact that it features a female protagonist and strong, diverse set of supporting characters (these are usually strong sources of my interest in a series). The placing of Kate herself in extreme danger towards the end of the book as a tool to increase the level of suspense is not a good sign, in my opinion. I prefer authors (like Val McDermid) who use other devices to successfully enthrall the reader of suspense thriller mysteries.

Overall I’d say Sworn to Silence is a strong first entry in a series that other aficionados of the genre may enjoy if they do not have as many particular preferences and atypical aversions as I do to some of the book’s elements.

Title: Sworn to Silence (Kate Burkholder, #1)
Author: Linda Castillo.
Pages: 384.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: April 1, 2010.
Date Read: July 1, 2014.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.