The Wheat Field (Mysteries & Horror)
by Steve Thayer

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Book Reviews of The Wheat Field (Mysteries & Horror)

Book Review: Pseudonymous Straub
Summary: 5 Stars

Whenever you think you've got this one figured out, the author throws an ingenious twist your way. It begins with a double-barrelled shotgun blast, ends in thunder, lightning and flame, and traces a labyrinthine trail in-between of corrupt politicians and police, menacing secret societies, setups and double-crosses, frame-ups, cover-ups, mysterious late-night phone calls, contacts of dubious loyalties, hidden agendas, jealousy, greed, and every film noir element imaginable.

The most brilliant aspect of this lightning-fast, multiply-layered page-turner is its own narrator, Deputy Detective Pliny Pennington, a man who - all the way to the closing chapter - the reader can't ever quite be sure of. Pliny has a checkered past, which includes obsessive voyeurism, stalking, and even one plain, old-fashioned, cold-blooded murder. Is he a good guy, or a bad guy? Or just an average guy, a basic shade of gray with stronger than usual black and white highlights? The novel is brilliantly plotted and constructed, and holds the reader's interest in a constantly tightening vise that never lets go.

If you've never read Peter Straub, you'll get a great sample of his work in Thayer's The Wheat Field. If you have read Straub, you'll love this book more than you could imagine. If you don't know and never care to find out who Peter Straub is, you'll still find this an incredibly thrilling and surprisingly delightful read.

Don't miss it. It's great.

Summary of The Wheat Field (Mysteries & Horror)

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

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• Suspense