Heartland by David Wiltse (First Edition)

The author of Prayer for the Dead chronicles Secret Service agent Billy Tree's fall from grace following the murder of his partner by a would-be assassin and his subsequent return home to reconnect with his past, but he soon discovers that rural Falls City, Nebraska, hides its own deadly conspiracy. 35,000 first printing.

Wiltse's routine suspense yarn is a far cry, both geographically and dramatically, from his previous novel, the appropriately titled Blown Away, which featured a vibrant cast and a colorful New York City setting. The backdrop here is Falls City Nebr., a "scratch on the Great Plains with a population of a mere five thousand people," where Secret Service agent and Falls City native Billy Tree is recovering from a botched operation that left his partner dead and Billy severely traumatized. Settling in with his sister, Kath, Billy once again encounters his old friends and foes all straight out of central casting. Pat Kunkel, the town's crusty sheriff, resumes his paternal friendship with Billy, who rekindles his not-quite-consummated affair with high school sweetheart, Joan, who's divorced from abusive Duane. Then there's Kath's drunken husband ("Peripatetic Stu, as Billy called him") and Huford Peck, the town's simpleminded hobo. The list goes on. It takes Billy no time at all to realize that this Norman Rockwellesque burg has surprise a seamy underbelly. But when a shooting takes place at the local high school, the investigation seems no more pressing than the townsfolk's assorted peccadilloes. Though Billy's renewed relationship with Joan produces a few affecting moments, it's difficult overall to empathize with him. His mocking self-pity quickly wears thin, as does his habit of assuming an Irish brogue (homage to his ancestry) in times of stress. And the novel's set pieces action scenes making vivid use of the local landscape are undercut by lackadaisical pacing. Wiltse's frequently florid prose and his characters' homespun philosophizing are a further hindrance "Do you think it's just cornfields and a deranged boy with a gun? There are lives being lived here, Billy." Lives, maybe, but not a whole lot of life.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

You'll never look at a grain silo in the same way after reading this novel. Wiltse injects his small-town Nebraska setting with Hitchcockian terror: a cornfield, a school yard, even pieces of farm equipment all move from ordinary to horrific in the blink of an eye. Agent Billy Tree, who investigated the homes of crackpots as part of pre-event security for the Secret Service, has returned to his hometown of Falls City, Nebraska, to recover from physical injuries and his deep shame after his partner was killed on a house search. Billy wants nothing more than to hole up at his sister's home, watching the road and replaying the scene where he failed his partner. But the plight of his old girlfriend and her son, victims of harrowing psychological abuse from the ex-husband, forces Billy to rejoin life. And when a school shooting wounds his girlfriend and kills others, Billy can no longer ignore the sheriff's pleas to help him investigate. What Billy discovers is that the seemingly pure midwestern small town harbors big-time vices. What Billy feels is still shame, skidding over into cowardice and increasing the overall tension. The book's climactic scene, played out in a grain silo, has to be one of recent fiction's most terrifying. Heartland delivers a wrenching psychological portrait along with blood pressure-raising suspense. Connie Fletcher
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