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BREAKING SILENCE is the third volume in Linda Castillo's series about Kate Burkholder, the police chief of Painter's Mill, a small town in Northern Ohio with a large Amish community, of which Kate was once a member. Though she left the Amish years earlier, she is still sympathetic to its members, misses their simple way of life, and waxes nostalgic for their close family ties. No wonder she is devastated when the Slabaughs, a hardworking farm couple, and a visiting Slabaugh brother, are found asphyxiated in the manure pit in the barn. Kate grieves for and frets about the four orphaned children left behind, but the Amish community, led by their bishop, rushes to care for them. Meanwhile Kate's dismay turns to outrage when the events are revealed to be no accident. At the same time, she is looking into a series of violent crimes against the local Amish—buggies set on fire, farm animals slaughtered in their pens, and other vicious acts. The victims refuse to cooperate or identify possible suspects. Because these are probably hate crimes, the state sends in agent John Tomasetti, with whom Kate has had a jagged relationship that takes only one spark to reignite. Tomasetti also serves to lend some dispassionate distance to the Slabaugh case, as Kate cannot separate her own past from those of the orphaned children. Castillo is quite knowledgeable about the Amish community, and she fills the novel with a great deal of credible detail and local color that add interest to the story. However, her repeated assertions about how utopian the Amish are begin to grate. Furthermore, claims that the Amish are the most tight-knit of communities are undercut by details that arise about incest that make a couple seem rather too loving. Their practices of excommunication and shunning of those who disagree appear neither loving nor merciful to those sent into exile. And the lack of sanitation that speeds the Slabaughs' deaths won't have many "Englishers" rushing to buy meat from them. Finally, as the maimed and unconscious Amish are piled into motorized ambulances and taken to emergency rooms that often result in hospital stays, an unsolved mystery is how all these medical bills are paid for. Surely, the Amish don't buy medical insurance. Castillo is mute on this matter. Despite the overdone apologia, Castillo writes well and surrounds Kate with a believable cast of locals. She also knows how to create some fun twists, though the ending isn't quite credible for either the Slabaugh murders or the hate crimes. Kathleen McInerney has now performed all three "Silence" novels about the Amish community and is quite comfortable with her characters. She demonstrates an acute understanding of Kate's strengths and weaknesses and can move back and forth easily between her worlds. She has also developed each member of the police force well, especially Tomasetti. For some reason the Amish men all have thin, soft voices that are virtually identical. Though I prefer her performances when she is given a work with real depth to it (such as Louise Erdrich's PLAGUE OF DOVES), McInerney can perform anything from children's books to quark theory. For those who like mysteries that touch on social history, BREAKING SILENCE will be of interest. But just as the Amish should be left in peace and deserve not to be persecuted, there may not be any justification in romanticizing their way of life either. § Karla Jay is a legally blind audio book addict, who lives in New York City, where she is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Pace University.
Reviewed by Karla Jay, August 2011
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