Reviews for Pray for Silence (Kate Burkholder Series #2)

The average rating for Pray for Silence (Kate Burkholder Series #2) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-19 00:00:00 Patrick Corcoran "There are monsters living among us. People who look no different than you and me. But they lack a fundamental component of the human species: a conscience." An Amish family of seven is annihilated at twilight in the tiny farming community of Painters Mill, Ohio. Kate Burkholder, Chief of Police, has her hands full trying to cover as much ground in the crucial first forty-eight hours of the homicide. Because of the cruelty and brutality inflicted on the victims, Burkholder immediately calls in for help. What follows is a dangerous venture into the dark, seedy underbelly of pornography, and the loss of innocence. After reviewing my highlights and notes, I realized that this book didn't quite measure up to the initial book in the series for two main reasons: repetition and repetition. See? It's annoying. I'd have hoped that most mystery writers would take a cue from the Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Nancy Drews series. It's not necessary to rehash the plot of the previous book until the reader is bored out of their mind. Carolyn Keene's books usually had a sentence that read something like: "Nancy, Bess and George had a close run-in with a ring of dangerous jewel thieves in an earlier adventure." Done and done! Apart from that, I just grew tired of Castillo's same use of descriptive words, especially the word "sage." Has anyone ever given you a "sage" look? What does that even encompass? Or her reference to Kate's past and how it kept coming up in this investigation to haunt her. I get it. Don't get me wrong. This is a thrilling page turner. Could it have been better? Yes. Am I giving up on the series? Definitely not. I've already purchased the third book, although I'll probably wait a minute or two before reading it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-10 00:00:00 Jim Morrissonn 4.5 stars I started reading this series when I won Among the Wicked in a Goodreads giveaway. It was book 8 in the series and I liked it so much that I decided to read all the books in the series. This is book 2 in the series and I recommend that you read them in order, as the characters develop and reveal past secrets as the series progresses. This book opens with a family of seven Amish people murdered on their farm. Two of the people murdered are teenage girls, who are tortured before they died. This is definitely not a cozy mystery, but both my wife and I enjoy this series. I read it in 2 days, because it is a riveting mystery. Kate Burkholder is the police chief of Painters Mill, a small town in Ohio of 1/2 Amish and 1/2 "Englishers" as the Amish call the outside people. Kate and her small police force do solve the murders, but not until the end was I sure of the who and why. Two quotes: Initial discovery of murder scene: "The house was as silent and dark as a 1920s noir film." BCI(Bureau of Criminal Investigation) agent John Tomasetti at a disciplinary hearing; "She looked at him over the bifocals perched on her nose and smiled in a way that reminded him of a coral snake, right before it sank it's fangs into you." This was a library book.