Thriller

Shamed
4 Stars

Chief Kate Burkholder and Agent John Tomasetti investigate the brutal murder of an elderly Amish woman and the abduction of her 7-year-old granddaughter. As the details begin to emerge, Kate realizes that the family and prominent members of the Amish community are keeping a dark and potentially deadly secret . . .

As always, this is a well-written police procedural with a compelling premise and appealing characters. That said, the motivation for the crime is glaringly obvious from the start, which undermines the tension and suspense.

This book deals with an interesting moral dilemma that makes both Kate and the reader reconsider their evaluations of the crimes and the killer. While the murders are heinous and the killer's actions are reprehensible, when the facts emerge one cannot help by understand and perhaps even sympathize with their plight.

Overall, an excellent addition to the series and I look forward to Kate's next case.

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Shamed (2019) (Kate Burkholder #11) by Linda Castillo. You might think that a story set among the Amish of Ohio might be slow moving, but this is totally electric. An Amish woman and her two young granddaughters are out collecting walnuts at the abandoned farm just down the road from where their family lives. When grandmother hears noises in the old farm house she goes in to investigate. She is thinking its just some critters up to no good. Then a man brutally attacks her with a knife, killing her.
The youngest girl manages to run away. Two local police are in the area of the farm to check out a horse and buggy wandering aimlessly on the county road when they hear the screams. Investigating they find the young girl and a grisly crime scene. And the little girl, frightened nearly witless is saying the devil took her older sister.
Chief Kate Burkholder finds herself in the middle of a brutal murder and, more importantly, the abduction of a young girl. The author ramps up the tension with a running clock, reminding us how important the first hours of any abduction case is in finding the victim alive. But this is Amish country, where secrets are buried deep and finding the truth is almost impossible. Ex-Amish herself, Kate manages to gain insights within the very community she left more than a dozen years before.
This is a fast paced, well conceived story of heart break and wrongs done with the best of intentions. The story is a nail biter that will have you up late reading, and it is worth the time spent. It is also a nice look into a community that lives side by side with ours yet seems invisible in so many ways. ( )

Once more Linda Castillo delivers a suspenseful story of murder in the Amish community. As with her other 10 Kate Burkholder books, we learn more about the Amish way of life. The murder of a grandmother, the kidnapping of one her granddaughters and the investigation of these crimes kept me turning the pages. ( )

An old woman is out picking walnuts with her two grandchildren when she hears a sound from inside the abandoned farmhouse where they are. No one lived on the farm for a long time so no one should be inside the house. A little time later is the woman dead and one of the granddaughters has been kidnapped. Kate Burkholder has to figure out who would want to hurt the old woman and why did the person in question take one of the children? Kate has a feeling that the people related to the old woman and some around her in the Amish community have a secret. That they are hiding something that made someone kill...

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