{"id":4107,"date":"2021-07-08T04:43:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T11:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4107"},"modified":"2021-07-08T04:43:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T11:43:50","slug":"linda-castillo-fallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/linda-castillo-fallen\/","title":{"rendered":"Linda Castillo: Fallen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s amazing to me that Linda Castillo can work within such a tight construct and still, every time, produce an original and thoughtful book.\u00a0 Her set up: Chief of Police Kate Burkholder, who has grown up Amish, is the insider\/outsider head of law enforcement in tiny, Amish centric Painter\u2019s Mill, Ohio.\u00a0 She has connections with the Amish but they don\u2019t fully trust her as she\u2019s left the faith, but she still has insider knowledge of the culture that help her to solve the crimes that occur in her community.<\/p>\n

And boy, are those crime numerous and brutal!\u00a0 To meet the lovely, soft spoken Castillo, it\u2019s a surprise how gory and violent her books can be, though the violence is always balanced by Kate\u2019s decency.\u00a0 The book opens with the truly horrific murder of Rachael Schwartz, a \u201cfallen\u201d Amish girl \u2013 her acts are so far outside the boundaries of Amish culture that she\u2019s viewed as unsavable.\u00a0 When she\u2019s discovered beaten to death in a Painter\u2019s Mill hotel room, however, Kate, who knew her as a child, is outraged and determined to find out who did this to her.<\/p>\n

Through flashbacks and interviews with friends and family, Castillo creates a portrait of Rachael as impulsive and somewhat ruthless in her dealings with other people, but so charismatic she inspires loyalty.\u00a0 One of those people who has earned her loyalty is her opposite:\u00a0 shy good girl Loretta, her childhood friend, who was tempted by Rachael as well as protected by her.<\/p>\n

In portraying these two opposite characters Castillo is able to get at the yin and yang of Amish culture, the good and the bad, and illuminate it from all sides.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly seems appealing to live within a community where you are accepted and cared for your whole life, with a central guiding principle.\u00a0 The flip side, of course, are the restrictions and judgments that come with it and that must be accepted to live comfortably inside the Amish framework.\u00a0 Rachael was unable to live with the restrictions and has long been estranged from her family.<\/p>\n

Castillo is a top notch thriller writer.\u00a0 She creates suspense, she provides clues and an interesting investigative process, and she always includes a good twist.\u00a0 Her books are insanely readable.\u00a0 I was especially taken with this one.\u00a0 Rachael is a fascinating character and Castillo\u2019s musing at one point \u2013 about the foundation a parent can instill, for good or ill \u2013 is interesting as Kate speculates that Rachael\u2019s parental foundation was too strict and unyielding.<\/p>\n

A thriller writer who gives the reader something to ponder as they read really can\u2019t be beat.\u00a0 I was annoyed to have to leave for work as I got to the end of the book, because I did not want to put it down until I finished it.\u00a0 Is there a better reader endorsement?<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s amazing to me that Linda Castillo can work within such a tight construct and still, every time, produce an original and thoughtful book.\u00a0 Her set up: Chief of Police Kate Burkholder, who has grown up Amish, is the insider\/outsider head of law enforcement in tiny, Amish centric Painter\u2019s Mill, Ohio.\u00a0 She has connections with … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[620,623,621,100,622,8],"class_list":["post-4107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amish","tag-kate-burkholder","tag-linda-castillo","tag-minotaur-books","tag-ohio","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4110,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4107\/revisions\/4110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}