A DARK PATH

Half a dozen long stories, five of them written between 2020 and 2024, about formerly Amish police chief Kate Burkholder, who keeps watching cultural borders in Painters Mill, Ohio, shimmer and shake.

In “The Pact,” Kate seeks a pair of tween boys, the Amish Aaron Kuhns and the “Englischer” Kevin Dennison, who’ve defied Kevin’s family, which has forbidden their friendship, in becoming blood brothers on a night of adventure that turns perilous. “Disappeared” asks whether Little Joe Kline, a 2-year-old who’s vanished from his Amish family’s home, has been taken by his birth father, Thomas McKee, a non-Amish man with a troubled past. In “Blood Moon,” the locals are terrorized, and several of them attacked, by a shadowy beast. Is it a bear or a wolf, neither of them native to Ohio—or, still worse, a mythical chupacabra? Human remains originally buried in an Amish cemetery whose new owner plans to open a B&B turn up in three different locations in “Hallowed Ground.” In “Dark Storm Rising,” Kate’s honeymoon with Agent John Tomasetti, of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, takes the newlyweds to the lakeside Sugar Maple Cabins, where Kate’s fond memories of her childhood are seriously disrupted by a snowstorm, the disappearance of one of their hosts, and the torching of one of the cabins. The title story, published here for the first time, uses a series of roadway accidents involving cars, buggies, drivers, and passengers to upend an Amish couple’s plan to spirit their granddaughter away from her unsuitable beau. Most of the stories aren’t very mysterious, but they’re so varied that many readers will put down the volume without noticing the lack of a single fatality.

Castillo uses mystery tropes to explore the contact zones of Amish culture with nature, outsiders, and the dead.