The Wheat Field - Hardcover

Thayer, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399148418 ISBN 13: 9780399148415

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2002

Synopsis

Deputy Pennington of Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin must embark on a murder investigation when the bodies of Maggie and Michael Butler are found in a wheat field, which plunges him into a labyrinth of strange twists and turns that helps him solve the murder, but unexpectedly leads him to an assassination plot set for election night. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Penzler Pick, February 2002: A book from Steve Thayer is always worth the wait. He has set three of them--The Weatherman, Saint Mudd, and Silent Snow--in the Minneapolis area and has repeated several of his characters. But in The Wheat Field he introduces a new cast of characters and moves the action to Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin.

The narrator is Deputy Pennington, who takes us back to the year 1960 and the wheat field murders. Pennington has been in love with Maggie since they were in school together, but Maggie fell in love with Michael Butler and married him, so it is a shock to everyone when Michael and Maggie are found together, shot to death in that wheat field. At first glance it would appear to be a murder-suicide. Michael has been shot between the legs and Maggie's face has been shot off. The murder weapon is lying next to Maggie's outstretched hand, and the wheat around the bodies has been pressed down in a perfect circle with no shoe or car marks going in or out of that circle.

But there are some odd things about the murder scene, even apart from that perfect circle of wheat. Neither Michael nor Maggie is wearing clothes, yet there are no clothes on the ground. The only clue is the butt of a Lucky Strike lying near the bodies and three perfect holes in the flattened wheat. In addition, Maggie is wearing her wedding ring but not the class ring she always wore.

Except for the farmer who finds the body on his land, Deputy Pennington is the first to arrive on the scene. Is this, he wonders, sexual, and did somebody stand by and watch? Soon Sheriff Fats and Trooper Russ Hoffmeyer join him. Hoffmeyer soon admits to Pennington that he was once invited to join Michael and Maggie in a threesome--which he did, the whole episode being filmed. Pennington admits to some jealousy that he was never invited, and it isn't long, of course, before he becomes the major suspect in the double homicide and is arrested.

In the background of the story is the 1960 presidential campaign (most of the good folks of Kickapoo Falls are solidly behind Richard Nixon, though Deputy Pennington, before his arrest, has the rare chance for a short conversation with John F. Kennedy when he comes through town). Before the end of the story we will have learned a good deal about Wisconsin politics and the private sexual quirks of many of its fine, upstanding citizens.

Steve Thayer has produced here another tour de force of suspenseful and shocking storytelling that puts him in the first rank of today's crime novelists. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

Steve Thayer is the author of five novels, including The Weatherman and Silent Snow.

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0399148418
• ISBN 13: 9780399148415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288