Saxton Reads! & Reviews

****review by CarolK
Just recently I was talking about violent acts against women in books and how sometimes, if gratuitous, it can turn me off. There's a fine line for me in what moves the plot forward and what is over the top and just plain too much. I got turned off on James Patterson for just this reason. Right or wrong this bothers me even more when women write violent scenes, as is the case in Linda Castillo's Sworn to Silence. I have to weigh the merits of the violence to the overall story. Would the story have had the same impact with less descriptive murders. In this case, I'd have to say yes. I was immediately hooked on the broken characters of Kate Burkholder, Chief of Police of Painters Mill, and John Tomasetti, Special Agent who together try to solve a series of horrific serial murders similar to those committed years ago by a fiend dubbed The Slaughterhouse Killer. Kate's character sings true. She harbors haunting secrets from when she was a teen living the plain life of the Amish and as an adult is now under a bann, having left the Amish life behind. Tomasetti, is dealing with his own nightmares after the murder of both wife and daughters to someone trying to get back at him in the most awful way. Burkholder and Tomasetti make a great team and I'm rooting for them both from the get-go. But the violence of the crimes in the end turns me off. Ok, the prologue hooked me. I see the monster, I feel the terror and I am hooked. I get it; I did not need to be graphically reminded throughout of the killer's depravity. Still, I'll give Kate and John another chance as I'm certain there will be a sequel. It's a brutal tale and if you can skip over man's inhumanity to women in this case, an engrossing series debut.