Hi and welcome to a very special episode of Case Closed. I'm Christy Westgard, your co-host,

and I'm so excited today to bring you a conversation that we had earlier with Linda Castillo.

Now, if you don't know, Linda Castillo is a New York Times best-selling author

and the mind behind the wildly popular Cape Berkholder series, which are Mystery Crime

Thriller's set in Amish Country. So she's just the person to walk us through how the Amish

deal with crime and punishment. Take a listen.

Hi, I'm Linda Castillo and I write the Cape Berkholder Amish Mystery series. The next book in

this series is titled Out Sider and it will be released on July 7th. And Kate, can you start by

just telling us a little bit more about how you got involved with writing about the Amish community?

Well, you know, I actually started my career interestingly in the romance genre and I wanted

to write a breakout book and I was able to come up with a high concept plot, but I knew in order

for this book to do well, I really needed something to set it apart from the rest of the pack.

And I took a trip to Amish Country and that's when I got the idea for Sworn to Silence.

And can you tell us a little bit more about the experience of writing the sort of series?

I think one of the challenges of writing a series is that a writer really has to keep it fresh.

And I think I accomplished that with outsider. It's one of my favorite books in the series and it's

hard to believe that it's the 12th book. But, you know, and Kate has, you know, of course she has

her Amish past, but she also has her other past after she left the Amish. And sort of what happens

with outsider is that these two worlds sort of collide. Somebody comes in contact with Kate who

who is from her other past. And of course it happens in Painter's Mill, which is Amish Country. And it's

really an interesting book that I loved writing.

Now, I want to pivot to Barbara Weaver's case. Were you familiar with Barbara's case?

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