Pray for Silence, by Linda Castillo

Pray for Silence is the second in a new mystery series featuring Kate Burkholder, Chief of Police in Painters Mill, Ohio. Painters Mill sits near a large Amish community, and an Amish family of seven, the Planks, is found dead in the book's first chapter. The fact that the family's two teenage girls were tortured, while the other family members were shot, suggests there may be a sexual element to the crime. When daughter Mary's diary is found, it seems likely that her secret life may be the key to the mystery. Suspects abound, from a variety of local losers to young men-about-town and the Planks' gay son Aaron, who was excommunicated by the Amish.

Kate feels a connection with both Mary and Aaron, as she was the victim of sexual violence as an Amish teenager and was excommunicated when she chose not to stay in the faith. She experiences a great deal of angst as the case unfolds, sometimes finding release in violence. Adding to the overall dysfunction quotient is her lover, state agent John Tomasetti, who is still recovering from the trauma of losing his wife and children to violence two years earlier.

Pray for Silence is not a bad escapist read--especially since Kate is a new enough character for me to still be interested (though I can't help wondering what other trauma from her youth we will learn about in the next book in the series, since the story we learned in Sworn to Silence is amplified with more pain in this title). At times, the fact that the police are making mistakes is terribly obvious--the crime cannot have been solved when it seems like it has been because there are both too many unexplained clues and too many pages left in the book but the fast pace kept me reading anyway.

Favorite passage:

There is an underground society that runs beneath the Norman Rockwell facade of most small towns . . .