"We all know the trope, or think we do: A 20-something woman is found dead in a cornfield, and the investigating officer recognizes the victim as a childhood friend. But just as surely as Mare of Easttown brilliantly tweaked the police procedural format, so does Erin Young in her lean-limbed, gripping new novel, the first in a series. Wisecracking, gimlet-eyed Sergeant Riley Fisher pursues a possible serial killer in an Iowa county caught between the ambitions of Big Agriculture and failing family farms. Young’s plot blazes outward like a prairie fire as the body count mounts and Riley’s own past surges into the present, testing her instincts in crime scene after crime scene, “shards of amber light sparking off waterways and wetlands, home to deer and turtles, beavers, and snakes.” —Oprah Daily
"Chilling." —Glamour (a Best Book of 2022)
"Crime fiction at its best." —Des Moines Register
“Fast, smart and authentic. Riley Fisher is a bold new character on the crime scene, grounding this eerie and engaging thriller. The Fields is one of the best procedurals I’ve read in a good long while.” —Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Heathens
"The Fields is my favorite sort of novel: the sharp prose and explosive plot immediately drew me in, but the richly textured exploration of life in rural America stayed with me long after I finished. I hope to see more of Sergeant Riley Fisher, the novel's dynamic female protagonist. This is a classic crime series in the making." —Cristina Alger, New York Times bestselling author of Girls Like Us
“This is superb. Dark, immersive and seriously gripping. Hints of True Detective & The Silence of the Lambs.” —Will Dean, author of The Last Thing to Burn
“Young delivers a disturbing, twist-riddled thriller stocked with well-drawn characters.” —Publishers Weekly
“What could be more all-American than a small town amid rolling fields of corn? But when a woman’s body is found in those same fields, the dark truth beneath that wholesome image begins to emerge.... From potential serial-killer investigation to high stakes political intrigue... The Fields is an impressive debut.” —Mystery & Suspense
2021-11-16
An Iowa police officer investigates a gruesome series of murders in this scathing indictment of big agriculture.
Consider yourself warned: British author Young’s debut crime novel, the first in a planned series, is grisly and dark, and readers who dislike gory scenes should be wary. Set in a version of America’s heartland that rejects salt-of-the-earth stereotypes, the book opens with a desperate, bleeding young woman fleeing an unseen menace through an Iowa cornfield. When her body is found by a local farmer the next morning, newly promoted Riley Fisher, Black Hawk County Police’s first female sergeant, realizes the dead woman is a childhood friend. The discovery brings back painful memories of trauma even as Riley struggles with family issues in the present. As more women disappear and disturbing signs of cannibalism are revealed, Riley begins to think the gruesome murders may not be the work of a single serial killer but part of a larger conspiracy that could reach far beyond the Midwest. An unsettling, foreboding atmosphere permeates the novel, mimicking the depression Riley fights to keep at bay and the region’s collective despair over economic loss at the hands of big agriculture. Young is at her best when she’s writing from Riley’s point of view: Riley’s battles with personal demons and casual sexism in the police department make her a solid foundation for a recurring series. But the complexity of the plot requires too many points of view—even the killer weighs in in overwrought asides—and Young is forced into too much explanation and exposition. She’s determined to shine a light on a real problem—the destruction of family farms to feed corporate greed—but the book’s overly complicated narrative gets in the way of her ability to simply tell a good story.
A complicated plot overshadows solid character development in this gory debut.
