Sworn to Silence by LindaCastillo

16 years ago a serial murderer/rapist was killed by one of his victims...or was he?

In present day Painter's Mill Ohio; a community of approximately 6000 people and a third of them Amish, on one bitterly cold January night Officer T J Bank, while answering a call about cows that have escaped, finds a body of a young woman. Chief of Police Kate Burkholder ( formerly Amish now, not so much) sits in on the autopsy of this victim and finds the one piece of evidence to prove that they must have a copycat killer in their midst. Or do they? Is it possible that the first killer didn't die from his wounds?

As the killer escalates, the Mayor and several of his cronies call in different law enforcement agencies, which for her own personal reasons Kate was praying wouldn't happen. Among the agencies called out, John Tomasetti, a has been cop, with a drinking and drug problem and his own ghosts from his past clinging like leeches and who is now with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation comes calling. And just to make Kate's life even more difficult she calls for and gets `help' in the form of a County Sheriff Nathan Detrick. Secrets that had been kept for 16 years, betrayals of those secrets, families torn apart by secrets, injustices corrected, and justice meted out in the way of the vigilante are just some of the things you will find in Sworn to Silence.

Sworn to Silence is not Ms Castillo's first novel, she has written a number of romantic suspense novels for Berkley Sensation and I can state for a fact that this novel is nothing like what you'd find at that publisher! There is no sentimental triteness, no impossible trysts in between the action. There is just plane action, mystery, suspense (and a whole lot of that!) with a touch of police procedural thrown in. If you love action suspense you are gong to love this book. It's sure to be a winner with mystery and police procedural fans too. I started and finished in the same day because I just couldn't put it down. I had to see if I could match wits with the author and sadly I found myself somewhat lacking because I never saw the ending come out of left field. Although in retrospect clues had been sprinkled about, albeit thinly! A highly satisfying nail biting roller-coaster of a read. I can't wait to see more like this come from Ms Castillos pen. If you like books like Night Sins and Guilty as Sin by Tami Hoag but with less romance, then you really must try this book. Night Sins/Guilty as Sin