Article Archives
P.L. Gaus bibliography
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Here's a capsule look, in order of publication, of P.L. Gaus' Ohio Amish
mystery series:
BLOOD OF THE PRODIGAL: Jon Mills decides to retrieve his 10-year-old son from the hands of the Bishop who had 10 years earlier cast Mills out of the Order. When Mills turns up dead, dressed in Amish garb, and with the boy missing, Professor Michael Branden plunges head-long into the closed culture to unravel the mystery and find the boy. Working in tandem sometimes and at cross purposes at others with his old friend Sheriff Robertson, Professor Branden digs through the past, recent and otherwise, to uncover the truths that many would prefer to leave undisturbed.
BROKEN ENGLISH: The peaceful town of Millersburg, Ohio, in the heart of Ohio's Amish country, is rocked by the vicious murder of one of its citizens at the hands of an ex-convict. When a local reporter covering the story ends up dead as well, with the convict already behind bars, suspicion falls on David Hawkins, father of the first victim.
CLOUDS WITHOUT RAIN: In the wake of a fatal accident involving an Amish horse-and-buggy and an 18-wheeler, Professor Michael Branden, working with the Holmes County Sheriff's Department, becomes suspicious about the true nature of the crash. His suspicions grow when the trustee of the dead man's estate disappears, and Branden knows he has more on his hands than a buggy crash on a sleepy country road. Faced with Amish teenagers robbing buggies on dusty lanes, land swindles involving out-of-town developers, several people dead, and a bank official missing, Branden struggles to understand the connections that will eventually link all of the pieces together.
CAST A BLUE SHADOW: Martha Lehman, a Mennonite college girl with a troubled past appears curled up and bloodied outside the offce of her childhood psychiatrist. That same morning, the mother of Martha's boyfriend is found murdered in her mansion west of Millersburg, Ohio. Professor Michael Branden and Sheriff Bruce Robertson begin an investigation that, in the space of a single weekend, implicates Martha, threatens to tear apart the fabric of Millersburg College, pits one professor against another, and brings Caroline Branden near to a breaking point over the girl she once tried so fervently to help.
A PRAYER FOR THE NIGHT: Amid a whirlwind of drugs, sex, and other temptations of the "English" world, a group of Amish teenagers on their Rumschpringe test the limits of their parents' religion. The murder of one and the abduction of another challenge Professor Michael Branden as he confronts the communal fear that the young people can never be brought home safely.
SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD: As another college year draws to an end, Professor Michael Branden is weary after nearly 30 years of teaching. Sitting in his office, he receives an unexpected visit from an Amish man who claims his brother, a dwarf like himself, has been murdered. Their discussion of the case is interrupted by a commotion on campus, which turns out to be the apparent suicide of a young woman. The investigations of these two deaths become intertwined as Professor Branden again teams up with his colleagues Pastor Cal Troyer and Sheriff Bruce Robertson to seek explanations for these bizarre events.
SOURCE: Ohio University Press.
Courtesy of Batavia Newspapers Corporation