In the small town of Painters Mill in Ohio a cop doing the rounds on the graveyard shift hears screaming. When he investigates he finds a terrified, trembling Amish man who tells him that there is a dead man the nearby house. There is more than a dead man though, all seven members of the Plank family have been brutally killed. Kate Burkholder, the town’s Police Chief, at first wonders if the family’s father, Amos, killed his family then himself but it soon becomes clear that Amos was murdered too and the hunt is on to find a motive and the killer.

I thought the first book in this series was a solidly entertaining read and rather looked forward to this follow-up. Unfortunately for me it had more of the elements I didn’t like about the first book and fewer of the elements I had enjoyed. Sigh.

Firstly there’s the violence. The aftermath of the brutal slaying of the Plank family takes four chapters (almost an hour of the audio book) to describe in extremely graphic detail that was completely and totally unnecessary. A little bit further on some video footage of the killings and other unspeakable acts is discovered and I endured lengthy descriptions of all the footage. Sure it was surrounded by the main character saying how awful it made her feel but either she or Castillo herself is fascinated by it because there’s no other reason for it to be so voluminous. It certainly served no storytelling purpose because in the end the only message I came away with was ‘evil exists’ which I already knew and didn’t need to be reminded by yet another depiction of raped and tortured women.

Then there’s the ‘hinky factor’. Of course characters in fiction don’t have to behave in the same way that real world people would. But they do have to behave in keeping with the story’s internal logic and, to be vaguely credible, a procedural has to have some semblance of a relationship to its real world counterpart. Pray for Silence really had neither of these elements. The two main characters, Kate and her love interest John Tomasetti from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Identification, moped about like a couple of lovesick teenagers whenever they were together and I’d be surprised if this Kate Burkholder could hold down a job in any police force in any country with poorly executed ‘sting’ operations and inability to control herself when confronted with nasty people.

There were some moments of the kind of thing that made the first book so strong including further depictions of the complicated interplay between the town’s Amish community and the ‘Englishers’ but overall I found these elements overshadowed by the gratuitous violence and meandering, soppy plot. The crime was solved almost as an afterthought which, for me, is rarely the sign of a good book. I’m sure more romantic readers would enjoy the romance element of the book but I suspect they’re exactly the ones who would be turned off by the graphic and copious violence so I’m not sure who I would recommend this book to.

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My rating 2/5

Narrator Kathleen McInerney; Publisher Macmillan Audio [2010]; Length 11hours 28minutes

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Other people aren’t nearly as troubled by this as I am so do check out a review at Lesa’s Book Critiques or hit Amazon where the majority of reviews thus far are positive. What do I know after all?

Title: Sworn to Silence

Author: Linda Castillo

Narrator: Kathleen McInerney

Publisher: MacMillan Audio [2009]

ISBN: n/a (downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 11hrs 43mins

Genre: Police Procedural (small town)

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My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: Engaging characters in an interesting setting but I could do without the violence .

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One night in the middle of winter a body is discovered in the snow in a small town of Painters Mill, Ohio. The woman appears to have been brutally murdered in a way that reminds everyone of a series of murders which took place in the area 16 years previously. The one person who doesn’t believe the same killer, named the Slaughterhouse Killer at the time, is active again is the town’s Police Chief Kate Burkholder. She shares a secret with two other people about that previous string of murders which makes her almost positive it’s a different killer. Accordingly she points the current investigation in other directions but the town’s other officials bring in outside help to ensure that the investigation focuses on any links to the Slaughterhouse Killer case.

The most engaging aspect of this book for me is the character of Kate Burkholder and the aspects of town life that are depicted through her. The area is home to an Amish community, of which Kate was a member until she was 18, and there is some unrest between the other townspeople and the Amish. Although Kate is no longer Amish her brother and sister are still in the community and overall she respects the Amish community even though she chose not to join it. She is a focal point for relationships between the town’s two divergent cultures and I am a sucker for stories which feature religions different to the one I was brought up with. Kate also struggles for much of the book with the knowledge that her secret may be forcing her to take actions which are not in the best interests of solving the case and I thought this complex issue was portrayed very realistically.

Overall the story was well paced: not screaming along at thriller pace but nor did it plod. There were several minor climax points before the ending and I didn’t lose my attention once. As well as being intrigued by Kate, my interest was held by an array of minor characters, mainly working in the police station. The seeds of a series were most obvious with this introduction of an engaging cast although I can’t envisage endless storylines in this setting.

I did struggle with other parts of the book. I found the burgeoning relationship between Kate and one of the external investigators brought in to help, John Tomasetti, too predictable and a bit soppy. However this probably won’t bother most readers who can’t be as unromantic as me. There were also a few plot points I found stretching my credibility metre. At one point for example someone is framed as the perpetrator of the murders and I just could not buy that everyone but Kate was so gullible as to accept the most unlikely killer. However my real issue was with the overly graphic depictions of the violence visited upon the victims of the killer (because of course one body is never enough). It really didn’t add anything to the story to have several paragraphs of bodily mutilations described for each victim and, rarely for me, I wished I was reading rather than listening so I could skip those bits.

Sworn to Silence offers a really solid story, some engaging characters and an interesting setting (although perhaps I got extra enjoyment because each mention of the wintry snow made me forget, momentarily, our unseasonal heatwave). However I’d like to see the next book avoid the overly gruesome violence.

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The book is very well narrated by Katherine McInerney and the audible version that I bought has a nice bonus in the form of an interview with the author. It’s an interview by the publisher so it’s not exactly hard-hitting but does provide an opportunity for Castillo to talk about her research methodologies (she has completed two lots of civilian police training among many other activities) and she gives some good background to the book. Unfortunately she wasn’t asked about the value of the detailed and gruesome depictions of the violent mutilations of the victims and whether or not she thought the book could have been just as good without them.

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This book has also been reviewed at Petrona (where Maxine shared my concerns about the violence but not about the romance), Lesa’s Book Critiques, Book Addiction and Whimpulsive