Plain Dead

by Emma Miller

Overview

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 A closer examination of the victim’s unpublished report leads Rachel to believe the Amish community is far from sinless.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…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780758291769
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	12/29/2015
Series:	A Stone Mill Amish Mystery , #3
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	753,653
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

EMMA MILLER lives quietly with her family on a farm in Kent County, Delaware. She also writes sweet Amish romances for Harlequin’s Love Inspired line.

Editorial Reviews

11/09/2015
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 fiancé, 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.” Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

2015-10-28
A nosy newsman sets the Amish world of Stone Mill on its ear. Bill Billingsly's stock in trade are the secrets he shares freely in the gossip column of a local paper. He's already shamed Joab and Annie Hershberger by revealing that their son is living in sin with an "English" girl in Delaware. Now he threatens to tell the world that innkeeper Rachel Mast was convicted of insider trading when she worked for Lehman Brothers. Although she's left the high-pressure world of Wall Street behind, even as she had left the quiet world of the Old Order Amish years earlier, Rachel dreads how Billingsly's revelation will disrupt the fragile peace she's made with her family. Before Bill can blab, though, someone kills him by binding him to his porch railing and drenching him with water, leaving him to freeze. Of course, Rachel isn't the only one with secrets to hide. Local potter Blade Finch quietly ditched his book group the night of the murder. Elderly Hulda Schenfeld tells Rachel that Bishop Abner Chupp may have had an illicit relationship before marrying his current wife, Naamah. So Rachel embarks on an unofficial investigation, partly to clear her own name, partly to restore her damaged relationship with her fiance, Pennsylvania state police detective Evan Parks, who's naturally called in to lead the official inquiry. Amiable Rachel's not at her best as she badgers friends and neighbors. Still, Miller's third report from Stone Mill achieves better balance than Plain Killing (2014), merging a well-informed look into the tranquil world of the Amish with a fairly edgy puzzler.

Kirkus Reviews