After the Storm

Castillo’s seventh thriller about Kate Burkholder (after 2014’s The Dead Will Tell) finds the chief of police of Painters Mill, Ohio, returning to the Amish community from which she was excommunicated as a young adult, after a tornado rips through the state. Reader McInerney’s visceral enactment of Kate’s tense narration adds to the thrilling progression of the storm and it’s aftermath, superbly crafted by Castillo. As a result of the storm, the police chief rescues an injured infant and uncovers the 30-year-old bones of a homicide victim. McInerney speaks Pennsylvania Dutch with the same apparent ease with which she handles the novel’s many voices—tough men and stern women, for the most part. McInerney’s rich portrayal of Kate suits every circumstance: from sharp anger when Kate is challenged, to frustration when the murder clues go nowhere, and, perhaps McInerney’s best accomplishment, to the pain and sadness Kate feels when her personal life is struck by its own romantic tornado. A Minotaur hardcover. (July)