Code 61 [Mass Market Paperback]

Donald Harstad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

CODE 61: maintain radio silence. someone may be listening.

Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague’s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman is startled to uncover a group that transforms the dark fantasies of vampire legend into grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another’s blood. As Carl is drawn deeper into this unnerving world, it becomes clear that the dead woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula.

The prime suspect, Dan Peale, is a sinister presence within the group--a man some say drinks blood and never, ever dies. It’s an outlandish, heinous theory, but then suspicions are bolstered by rumors of a card-carrying vampire hunter who is also pursuing Peale. All too soon, Houseman finds himself scrambling to track a vampire--before he kills again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A call to a Peeping Tom incident starts Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman on his strangest case yet in this nicely low-key but compelling page-turner. True, the Iowa lawman encountered Satanists in his debut, Eleven Days (1998), but the perp described hanging in thin air outside the upper story window looks like Bela Lugosi. When a body drained of blood is reported in a rural mansion, Houseman realizes this investigation isn't going to be routine, or easy. More bodies pile up, in Iowa and across the Mississippi in Wisconsin (with a fellow cop noting, "Vampire. Suspect that weird has to be from your side of the river"). Police radio chatter "Ten-four, Comm. 'I'll be ten-seventy-six to the scene'" and details of the manhunt could not be more authentic, since the author (Known Dead; The Big Thaw) spent 26 years in law enforcement. He even includes a glossary of ten codes for the curious. With laconic masterstrokes, Harstad complicates his plot with the arrival on the scene of a professional vampire hunter, problems with a disgruntled subordinate and Houseman's introduction to the sexual underworld of blood sports. Series regulars such as investigator Hester Gorse and Old Knockle do their turns, with officer Sally Wells copping the funniest moments why not bring some garlic on the stake-out, just in case? The suspect is supposed to be a vampire. Harstad has crafted another engrossing entry in one of the best new police procedural series.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Carl Houseman, primary detective for the Nation County Sheriff's Department, is called out to the apparent suicide of his boss's niece. After a careful crime scene investigation and a thorough autopsy, it is clear that Edie Younger could not have cut her own throat. The wound is very similar to that of a young man found dead in nearby Wisconsin. To complicate matters, the dead man's girlfriend had reported seeing a vampire-like creature outside her window. As Houseman and Iowa State Special Agent Hester Gorse grapple with people who actually believe that one of them is a real vampire, the story becomes a picture-perfect police procedural. Everything is here the painstaking search for evidence, the questioning of suspects and witnesses, the hours spent in the rain on stakeout, and the attention to the rules of law. This fourth book in the series by Harstad, a former deputy sheriff with 26 years of experience, is packed with suspense, heart-stopping action, and haunting scenes. For all fiction collections. Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-Univ. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553580981
• ISBN-13: 978-0553580983
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.2 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, wholesome Iowa bloodsucking, April 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Code Sixty-One: A Novel (Hardcover)

A step back from the big fireworks of secret government operations and terrorist plots of his last two books, Code Sixty-One still manages to rivet attention. Fans of crime scene investigation and suspect interrogation should love this story, as Senior Deputy Carl Houseman and his colleagues methodically investigate a nest of slacker vampires along the banks of the Mississippi.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of these novels is the fact that Houseman's personal life--aside from his diet--mostly remains personal. Harstad, while acknowledging the strain that police work puts on Houseman's marriage, saves the bulk of his words for the investigation of the crime and pursuit of the criminals.

Well-written and with enough thrills to keep from becoming a plodding recitation of a police training manual case study, Code Sixty-One is well worth a read.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Harstad, June 6, 2002

By 

Michelle Pettit - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Code Sixty-One: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm not a usual mystery reader -- but as a librarian in a small town in Northeast Iowa I read his books to expand my horizons and invited him to speak at our library. Harstad won me over. Something the other reviewers didn't mention is his humor -- and the quirky personality in his stories. He represents our corner of Iowa in a way I haven't seen before (although the cases have been fictionalized they are taken from parts of incidents in his career and the atmosphere darkened -- he shows our part of the world to be surrounded by bluffs along the river and full of scrappy, hard-working and intelligent people ... and some strange people as well) People who visit are surprised how beautiful it is here (not at all what they expect from Iowa). Harstad lives here, worked here for over 20 years in the police department -- and when he writes about our landscape and our people he knows what he's talking about. Of course -- a novel focuses on the unusual (so don't think we're vampires) By the way -- the house in Code Sixty-One really exists and is only a block away from me. Sny Magill is a real place too. Enjoyable, personable mystery.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bitingly Funny, February 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Code 61 (Mass Market Paperback)

Having lived in the most liberal city in Iowa for close to ten years, this would seem like satire if the characters weren't just like people I'd met. If you can imagine Grant Wood meets "The Osbournes" with a healthy dash Joe Friday and Charles Manson, you'll get a good idea of what Carl Houseman's world is like.

Some mystery stories are good. Reading a nice Agatha Christie you sort of puzzle your way through and get to the end and feel, "well that was very nicely done." Reading a nice Harstad is more like watching the Munsters move to middle America.

It's funny and short enough to read in a day or three. It won't make you rethink your life, but it might make you rethink the idea that small towns are boring little places where nothing ever happens.