Plain Dead
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A gossip is gagged for good in this mystery that combines “a well-informed look into the tranquil world of the Amish with a fairly edgy puzzler” (Kirkus Reviews).
When a newspaperman is murdered in the Amish community of Stone Mill, Pennsylvania, Rachel Mast digs up the dirt to find out who wanted to bury the lead…
Although she left her Old Order Amish ways in her youth, Rachel discovered corporate life in the English world to be complicated and unfulfilling. Having returned to Stone Mill, she’s happy to be running her own B&B. But she’s also learning—in more ways than one—that the past is not always so easily left behind.
After local newspaperman Bill Billingsly is found gagged and tied to his front porch, left to freeze overnight in a snowstorm, Detective Evan Parks—Rachel’s beau—uncovers a file of scandalous information Billingsly intended to publish, including a record of Rachel pleading no contest to charges of corporate misconduct. Though Evan is certain of her innocence, it’s up to Rachel to find the real killer. A closer examination of the victim’s unpublished report leads Rachel to believe the Amish community is far from sinless. But if she’s not careful her obituary might be the next to appear in print…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Miller's so-so third Amish mystery (after 2014's Plain Killing), Rachel Mast, the owner of a B and B in Stone Mill, Pa., where she grew up in the Amish faith she no longer practices, argues on the first day of the Winter Frolic festival with newspaperman Bill Billingsly about the harm that his vicious gossip column has done to innocent people. In response, Billingsly threatens to expose a secret of Rachel's. When his frozen body turns up tied to his front porch, Rachel's fianc , Det. Evan Parks, reluctantly decides to treat her as a murder suspect, driving a wedge between the couple. Rachel's own investigation of tenuous clues an Amish man's hat lost in the snow, for example leads to a rift with Bishop Abner Chupp, whom she much admires. The divide between Amish and Englishers also provides some tension, but readers should be prepared for stock verbal exchanges between Rachel and Evan, who tells her at one point, "And you need to rein in your emotions and let me do my job."
