That book about The Big Bang Theory was so large, I didn’t have much time to read anything else over the weekend. So, today, I’m sharing Sandie Herron’s review of The Dead Will Tell by Linda Castillo. Thank you, Sandie.

The Dead Will Tell
Written by Linda Castillo
Series:  Kate Burkholder, Book 6
Kindle Edition
Minotaur Books (July 8, 2014)
Pages:  317
ASIN:  B00HP1I7F2

In the sixth entry of the Kate Burkholder series, author Linda Castillo brings us the story of a haunted house.  The residents of rural Painters Mill, Ohio believe the old Hochstetler farm is haunted by the Amish family who lived there 35 years ago.  Very early one morning, Billy Hochstetler heard sounds in the kitchen.  Sneaking downstairs, he sees his parents being held hostage while three men in masks rob them of their cash.  Four more young children join him as their father is shot dead.  Now hysterical, the five are herded into the dark basement from which Billy escapes and chases the gang leaving with his mother in the back of a car.  Unable to stop them from kidnapping her, Billy turns back to the house only to find it burning with his siblings inside.  Later adopted into the Yoder family, Billy uses the nickname Hoch to remember his old family yet he is haunted by guilt.

Belinda Harrington is worried about her father who lives alone albeit in a gorgeous home with an expensive car.  He’s done well in his real estate business and is now semi-retired.  Checking the barn, she discovers him hanging from a rafter.  Police Chief Kate Burkholder arrives on the scene with the coroner.  Every suicide is investigated as a homicide until the facts are all in.  The body of Dale Michaels has also been shot, and the wound holds an Amish peg doll inscribed with the word Hochstetler.

Dale Michaels’s car holds his cell phone where Kate discovers he had called four other people just a day before he died.  Unable to make any connections between them, Kate visits each one, yet they all deny any friendship except that they knew each other 35 years ago in high school.  When a second person is butchered to death and left with another doll, Kate discovers the threatening notes that had been left for her.  Notes just like the ones the town council member has been getting.

Meanwhile, Kate is very concerned about her lover and roomate John Tomasetti.  He is an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation and not too long ago bought a farm he is fixing up in nearby Wooster.  Both Kate and John have their own personal baggage, with John’s wife and daughters having been murdered a few years before.  Only now one of the murderers has gotten off on a technicality, and John is becoming unhinged.  Kate is on edge because the bones of the man who raped her when she was 14 and whom she shot dead have been found.  The sheriff has already identified the remains and been to see Kate and her siblings about the man her father had hired that fateful day 17 years ago.

The past and the present flow back and forth in Linda Castillo’s capable hands.  Further investigation into the Hochstetler massacre sends Kate in new directions that reveal unexpected answers with gruesome consequences.  I could barely put this book down and kept compulsively turning pages.  I was riveted by the concentric storylines expertly woven together.  The identity of the killer was a mystery alluded to but not answered until the very end.  This was an excellent police procedural that I highly recommend.