Fallen is the 13th Kate Burkholder procedural mystery by Linda Castillo. Released 6th July 2021 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a very well written murder mystery and although it's number 13 in the series, it works well as a standalone. I do recommend reading the previous books, they're all solid; well plotted and full of believable characters and inter-agency police stories. There are some minor spoilers as backstory in this book which have some bearing on earlier books, but they're relatively minor.
The sense of place is palpable. There are a number of Amish characters (the small town where Chief of Police Kate Burkholder works is a rural agricultural area inhabited by a number of Amish families). The author's descriptions are nuanced and believable. I found some of the dialogue jarring because it's liberally sprinkled with Pennsylvania Dutch, but the author is adept at translating, and most of it is understandable from context. I enjoyed the development of the investigation and Chief Burkholder and her team's sense of cooperation and their tenacity in uncovering what happened more than a decade ago.
The characters are impressively nuanced. It takes a quite a lot of technical expertise to write characters who do bad things but aren't necessarily bad people and subtlety to allow readers to arrive at their own conclusions. I never felt much of a connection with the first victim, but the mystery works well and it was an engaging read. There was one fairly major plot hole (which could have been excised without losing much) which wasn't resolved, but other than that, the denouement and resolution were well written and satisfying.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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