Plain Dead

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.)