The Burning is the 16th Kate Burkholder procedural thriller by Linda Castillo. Released 9th July 2024 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's Press imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in hardcover, 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.
This is a very well written murder mystery and although it's number 16 in the series, it works well as a standalone. All the background character and setting information is provided in the book itself. There is an ongoing, multi-book, partnership between formerly-Amish small-town police chief Kate and her husband, an investigator with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, as well as an ensemble cast of colleagues. Reading the previous books is recommend, they're all solid; but it's not necessary to understand the action in this book. The series is well plotted and full of believable characters and inter-agency police stories.
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 whose population is roughly 1/3 Amish). The author's descriptions are nuanced and believable. The book is liberally sprinkled with Pennsylvania Dutch, but the author is adept at translating, and most of it is understandable from context.
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 to allow readers to arrive at their own conclusions as well as the converse (bad people who are charming and well regarded). The denouement and resolution were well written and satisfying; there were some surprising twists at the end.
It's important for readers to be aware: this book contains quite graphic descriptions of violence, body horror (an immolation murder on the first pages which is -difficult- to read), trauma, and oppressive religious fundamentalism and closed societies. Language is "R" rated.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 9 hours and 31 minutes and is narrated capably and well by series narrator Kathleen McInerney. She has a warm and rich clear alto voice and does a good job delineating the widely varied accents of a range of characters of all ages and both sexes including elderly and young voices. Sound and production quality are high throughout the recording.
Four and a half stars. This series/author will likely already be on public library acquisitions lists and available from local libraries. It's a consistently high quality procedural series and would make a great choice for a very long binge/buddy read. It would also be a good choice as a mystery book club selection; lots of content for good and enthusiastic discussion (modern sexism, religion, rural area life, women in positions of respect (law enforcement) in those areas, etc).
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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