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JUST PLAIN MURDER  by Laura Bradford

JUST PLAIN MURDER

by Laura Bradford

Pub Date: Nov. 27th, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-440-00040-2
Publisher: Berkley

Pennsylvania shop owner Claire Weatherly (A Churn for the Worse, 2016, etc.) helps her formerly Amish boyfriend solve another murder.

Shunned by the Amish family, friends, and neighbors in his native town of Heavenly for abjuring his faith after baptism, Jakob Fisher is still proud of his work as a police detective. And he’s grateful to his mentor, Russ Granger, for showing him how to be the best detective possible. So when Russ, who’s retired to Florida, is murdered on a visit back home, Jakob naturally becomes obsessed with finding his killer. Confident that the key to the murder lies in a case from Russ' past, Claire takes time off from her shop to help Jakob plow through the files Russ brought with him, leaving Heavenly Treasures in the capable hands of teenage shop assistant Annie Hershberger. Claire confides to her Amish best friend, Esther Miller, her fears that Jakob may be driving himself too hard in his quest to bring Russ’ killer to justice. Esther, like almost all Bradford’s Amish, is supremely calm, centered, and competent, but she just can’t seem to quell Claire’s English agitation. Only by helping Jakob drive a murderer out of the paradise that is Heavenly can Claire restore her world, and Jakob’s, back to order.

Bradford’s look at Amish life is cartoonishly superficial, marked chiefly by having her characters repeat “mamm,” “dat,” and “Rumspringa” every few sentences. Even a fairly clever solution can’t redeem this sixth installment from its literary sins.