Graveyard Fields: A Novel

by Steven Tingle

Overview

Filled with humor and twists, Tingle's debut is a slow burn mystery that could only take place in the South, for fans of Timothy Hallinan and Janet Evanovich.

Private detective Davis Reed didn’t move to Cruso, North Carolina looking for friends. Down on his luck, Davis narrowly escaped an anonymous attempt on his life and fled to the tiny mountain community in order to hide, brew his own beer, and put his detective days behind him to work on a non-fiction book. But as usual with Davis, things aren’t going to plan.

When he finds several keys on a mountain trail near the Blue Ridge Parkway, Davis sets out to locate the rightful owner. Upon discovering that one of the keys fits a vintage BMW owned by a man who’s recently vanished, Davis can’t help but think the keys unlock a mystery, or better yet, a chest full of gold rumored to be hidden somewhere among the mountains of western North Carolina.

But keys that could lead to lost gold are a hot commodity, and Davis needs to outsmart everyone from law enforcement officials to amateur treasure hunters who are willing to do anything to get their hands on them. To make matters worse, people from Davis’s past are catching up to him.

Along with his new best friend, Dale Johnson, a local deputy who knows just how to push Davis’s buttons, and Dale’s cousin Floppy, a mad genius mechanic armed with a heart of gold and a mouth that never stops moving, Davis tries desperately to find lost treasure, start a romance with a smooth talking brewery owner, and most importantly, stay alive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643856865
Publisher:	CROOKED LANE BOOKS
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Steven Tingle was born and raised in western North Carolina. Before becoming a writer he was a golf resort manager, real estate developer, and restauranteur. As a journalist specializing in travel, style, and food and drink his work has appeared in Robb Report, Modern Luxury, Town, Tempus, and Discovery. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his wife Jess.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Graveyard Fields:
“Tingle deftly evokes a very particular sense of place.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Cleverly crafted and original ... the kind of private eye mystery blended with police procedural elements that makes for blockbuster movies.”
—Midwest Book Review

"Lovely North Carolina scenery, plenty of good beer and classic rock 'n roll, and a hell of a fun and clever mystery to follow, Graveyard Fields is right down my alley. If you don't have a blast reading this book, I really can't help you."
—Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of the Quinn Colson crime novels

“Steven Tingle’s debut novel, Graveyard Fields, is a noteworthy, not to be missed summer read. His flawed, but still likeable protagonist, Davis Reed, narrates and moves the story with wit and pedal to the metal.”
—David Swinson, bestselling author of The Second Girl and City on the Edge

"Steven Tingle possesses a smooth and lyrical cadence that will keep you rolling through the pages of Graveyard Fields like a pick-up joyriding across the North Carolina landscape. This is a gripping read, both energetic and thoughtful, and will carry you deep into the night."
—Michael Farris Smith, author of Nick and Blackwood

"Graveyard Fields starts with a bang then reels you into its foggy aftermath: the day-to-day ennui of Davis Reed, a Xanax-numbed ex-PI-turned-aspiring-writer-in-hiding. Reed’s self-deprecating humor, eviscerating descriptions, and punchy jabs of dialogue are so quotable they may as well be trademarked. When Reed’s small, nagging fixations finally catapult readers into a surreal, hilarious crime novel, the result seizes the breath between wheezes of laughter. Graveyard Fields is a smart, redemptive, and cackle-provoking debut."
—Chris Harding Thornton, author of Pickard County Atlas

From the Publisher

2021-05-19
A Charleston cop–turned–private eye desperate to put the big city behind him buries himself in picturesque Cruso, North Carolina, and finds that crime and danger are just as plentiful in God’s country.

A disagreement at gunpoint with his brother-in-law, Sgt. Greg Evans of the Charleston PD, has made Davis Reed persona non grata with his landlady and sister, Laura, whose husband he left in a coma, and made him yearn for an unspoiled place where he can roost undisturbed and write a book about the 1946 crash of a B-25 airplane into the side of Cold Mountain. He rents a cabin from Haywood County Sheriff’s Deputy Dale Johnson, who shares his taste in home-brew and heavy metal, but he’s still plagued by his need for Xanax chased by beer and his anger-management issues. When Reed finds a set of keys along a mountain trail, he’s determined to restore them to their owner, who seems to be remarkably reluctant to claim them. While he’s waiting, he befriends mechanic Floppy Johnson, whose grandfather claimed to have found a chest of gold near the crash site. He strikes up a possible romance with improbably named bar owner Diana Ross. And he gets on the wrong side of both Deputy Skeeter Norris and his boss, Sheriff Royce Byrd. First-timer Tingle deftly evokes both a very particular sense of place and his hero’s irritated inability to finish anything he starts, though Reed’s limitations as a sleuth—his habit of trusting all the wrong people gives a new dimension to Dale’s question, “You don’t get around to much, do ya?”—make him a better companion than leader.

A beer- and pill-soaked idyll whose hero seems equally unlikely to succeed as a novelist or a detective.

Kirkus Reviews