I was going to give a warning and acknowledge that I'm aware that this is copaganda, but is it truly copaganda if it makes the cops look really, really bad?

One of my mom's friends recently gave me a sack of Linda Castillo paperbacks, so I decided to give the series a try. After all, I've worked in libraries with avid Amish fiction readers for 10 years now, without once reading an Amish book myself.

This is much more Karin Slaughter than Wanda Brunstetter, which, honestly, is probably the only kind of Amish fiction I'll end up reading. The protagonist is Kate Burkholder, who grew up Amish but now works as the police chief in her Ohio hometown, drawing on her upbringing to bridge cultural gaps between the Amish and English communities. She also protects a dark secret from her past, one that ties her to the emerging series of murders that bear striking similarities to ones that occurred more than a decade ago.

I had a pretty good time with this book. I'm not a huge fan of the POV changes, which feel like they arise from the author's conflicting needs to have Kate's voice driving the story and to let the reader know things that Kate can't know, with no good solution. And I don't love the romance. But overall, this is a solid, gritty police procedural with an interesting setting with lots of built-in conflict, so if that's your thing, you'll probably like this. I'm willing to give more of the series a try just to see if Mona gets more of storyline, because she's my favorite supporting character.

CW for sexual assault, murder, and all the usual things to expect from a gory thriller.