She hadn't believed in monsters since she was six years old, back when her mom would check the closet and look beneath her bed at night. But at the age of twenty-one, bound and brutalized and lying naked on a concrete floor that was as cold as ice, she believed.

Enveloped in darkness, she listened to the hard drum of her heart. She couldn’t stop shivering. Couldn’t keep her teeth from chattering. Every minuscule sound made her body tense in terrible anticipation of the monster’s return.

Has the Slaughterhouse Killer returned to Painters Mill, after all these years? Kate has her own, secret reasons for believing otherwise.

Painters Mill and Holmes County are Amish country. The Pennsylvania Dutch Amish and their English neighbors have co-existed in this area for over two centuries. But when a second brutalized corpse is found, this one a young Amish woman, tensions in the rural community begin to mount. The city council calls Kate on the carpet for having failed to immediately request outside assistance from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and perhaps even the FBI, and Kate is unable to adequately explain the delay. For to do so would require that she violate the oath of silence that she had been sworn to, sixteen years earlier.

With Sworn to Silence, author Linda Castillo has graduated from the genre of romance novels into that of suspense, and this is a remarkable first outing. Everything about this book bears the markings of an experienced and gutsy writer of crime fiction. On no level throughout the story is the reader in any way let down.

The first person, present tense narration that Castillo employs is not an easy construction to maintain throughout a full-length novel. But in Sworn to Silence, that point of view is not only maintained, it is exploited to its fullest potential. The very personal, real-time mood that is evoked by Castillo’s prose keeps the reader continually at a high level of involvement, turning pages until there are no more pages to turn.

The dialogue is down-to-earth and realistic. The plot is an intricately woven masterpiece, unfolding like a favorite AAA road map. The depictions of Amish culture and customs are colorful and priceless, just the sort of detail and local color that we look for in the best-written stories.

And the subtly complex motivations and interactions of the well-drawn supporting characters affix the story firmly on solid ground. There is Rupert "Glock" Maddox, Kate's most experienced officer in the department, a rock-solid support who she can always depend upon. In contrast there is Officer T.J. Banks, relatively new to law enforcement, and wholly unprepared for the sight of a mutilated corpse. Then there is BCI Agent John Tomasetti, the jaded, worn-out alcoholic who believes he is at the end of his career, and perhaps even his life, until he meets Kate. The character of Tomasetti lends a secondary level of intrigue to the story, not to mention a bit of romance. And even the depictions of the bigoted and short-sighted members of the Painters Mill City Council add to the realism and earthiness of the story.

Sworn to Silence is a novel that steadily builds in tension from the very first page until the last. This book is a winner. I look forward to reading more from Linda Castillo.