The Dead Will Tell by Linda Castillo

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Content: Strong Language, Implied Sex



Everyone in Painters Mill knows the abandoned Hochstetler farm is haunted. But only a handful of the residents remember the terrible secrets lost in the muted/hushed whispers of time—and now death is stalking them, seemingly from the grave.

After reading the last book, and with the way it ended I was expecting Kate to still be worried about that secret from her past to be discovered, but there wasn't any mention of it at all in this book. Instead, it's Tomasetti who has something from his past come up. It has to do with what happened to his family 3 years ago, and it really throws him. I can't say that I completely agree with how he ends up dealing with it, but I also can't blame him either. Let's just say he uses the Burn Notice method on someone. If you've ever seen that TV show then you know how they deal with criminals in it, and you will know what I mean.

The mystery this time around was pretty good. The thing that happened to the family that lived on the farm was very sad. It wasn't hard to figure out who the "ghost" was that was going around murdering people, but that twist at the end did surprise me a bit. One of the best things about this book is that Kate actually got backup this time before she rushed into a dangerous situation. Of course that didn't go real well, but at least she tried. One thing that didn't make sense to me though, was why the killer shot at them instead of just continuing to hide until they left.

The only thing that I really didn't like about this book was the repetition of different phrases that the author would use. For some reason the author really seemed to favor the phrase "he wrapped his hands around my biceps" or some variation of that phrase. It was repeated four times in this one book and one time in the last book. A few of those times it was used when characters were about to get romantic, and I didn't think it was a very good phrase to use in that situation.

Overall this book was a good addition to the series, and like the book before, it left me wanting to immediately pick up the next one and read it.