The Names of Our Tears (2013) by P. L. Gaus
Genre: krimi, travelogue
GoodReads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.58 by 201 litizens.
Verdict: more.
In rural north east Ohio among a largely Amish farming community, one teenage Amish girl is found shot to death. Bad. It was no NRA-inspired school shooting. The bullet comes a serious organised crime handgun sanctioned by the NRA for every trigger finger. Worse. Crime scene tests find traces of cocaine. Worst. How could a sheltered Amish teenager get involved with a drug crime?
What follows is a police procedural with emphasis on questioning those who knew her again and again and piecing together an inferential picture of what might have happened. This is done against the background of the shock and grief of her family and friends at this ugly intrusion into their largely cocooned life.
The trail extends to Sarasota in Florida where many Amish go to winter in the off season of Ohio farming. There is quite a bit of back and forth between Ohio and Florida.
The manners and mores of the Amish are treated with respect, as are their interactions with the sheriff who investigates and who seems to have a bottomless budget as he goes all out. No McKinsey manager is in sight telling the sheriff to go back to writing parking fines where there is revenue flow.
There is a side bar about an EPA investigation that allows the author through the sheriff to tweak the nose of Federal authority, but which adds nothing to the main line, though I, too enjoyed seeing the bumptious cardboard stereotype come undone.
One the things I learned about Amish practice in this book is the daadihaus. The dictionary defines it as a Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) term for a granny flat near or attached to the extended family home, with the difference that is grandpa. In practice, in this book it seemed to be a man cave where the elder male of the clan may retire in privacy to do things that might not be 100% Amish in the eyes of the local Bishop. Though the story is tragic, it does not have a morally satisfying end, but I guess that is lifelike.
Eighth in a long running series but the first I have read. I have already acquired another for future reference.