The Wheat Field (Mysteries & Horror) [Paperback]

Steve Thayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003 | Series: Mysteries & Horror

In 1960, two dead bodies were found in a crop circle. Now, one small-town lawman reveals: What happened out there...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, February 2002: A book from Steve Thayer is always worth the wait. He has set three of them--The Weatherman, Saint Mudd, and Silent Snow--in the Minneapolis area and has repeated several of his characters. But in The Wheat Field he introduces a new cast of characters and moves the action to Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin.

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Shockwaves rock a 1960s small town when the grisly shotgun murder of two leading citizens sets the town's deputy sheriff against the sheriff and the politically powerful Gunn Club set. Deputy Pliny Pennington has carried a torch for Maggie Butler since their Kickapoo Falls, Wis., high school days, though she scornfully rejected him in favor of boys higher up the social ladder. When she is found in the middle of a wheat field with her face blown off beside her dead husband, Michael, Pliney is assigned the case and is promptly targeted by sinister forces intent on framing him for the murders. Shaken by the killings, a state cop admits to joining Maggie and Michael in sex games; Senate candidate Webster Sprague and his wife, Caren, were involved, too. Events get complex when Caren, who's seemingly run away with lots of Webster's money, calls Pliny long distance and feeds him clues that lead to sex film tapes giving leverage over Webster and perhaps revealing the killer in the wheat field. But just as Pliny gets close to a solution, he finds himself set up to take the fall for an even more heinous crime than the double murder, one linked to the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy presidential race. Though the political connection is less than credible, Thayer has a knack for building tension and defining place, and his smalltown sinners are all too believable. The spectacular ending is only slightly marred by the questionable plot device that gets Pliny there. Agent, Elaine Koster.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451410750
• ISBN-13: 978-0451410757
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,324,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read, lots of porn...., March 17, 2002

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Wheat Field (Hardcover)

THE WHEAT FIELD by Steve Thayer is not the type of mystery I ordinarily read. I usually prefer women writers and/or mysteries set in England or American crime stories with hard-boiled female heros like Kay Scarpetta or Stephanie Plum. I was drawn to Thayer's book because the setting is Wisconsin--a state I have known and loved all my life. I think Thayer handled his descriptions of various places in Wisconsin pretty well.

Thayer's story is a compelling tale I read in a half day. This is the kind of book you take on a long plane flight or to the beach. Thayer is an excellent writer whose style is reminiscient of Hemingway's (not a particular favorite of mine but he wrote well). More than one aspect of THE WHEAT FIELD reminded me of THE SUN ALSO RISES.

Thayer's characterization of Pliny Pennington is believable. Pliny seems to be a cross between Forrest Gump and Micky Spillane and although there was a time when I would not have belived such a fellow could exist I now know there are innocents who are worldly-wise. Besides, Pliny the protagonist is relating the events in this story years later. Some of the dumb things he did as a younger man he would not have done in later life after he "wized" up.

Pliny is the Deputy Sherif of Kickapoo County, and although this book has been characterized as a "police procedural" it is not. There are NO forensics. Even though Pliny is a law enforcement officer, I would characterize him as more akin to the 1950s detective--you know the guy who was always in some kind of trouble because he trusted untrustworthy adversaries and was not above breaking the law himself. The other characters in this novel are shallowly drawn and generally as unlikable as the characters in a Mickey Spillane novel.

Thayer includes a good deal of pornography. He may have thought it was necessary for the plot, but his graphic descriptions seem a bit gratuitous at times. He introduces a character who knows a bit about voyeurism (a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin), a sort of "profiler" Pliny says. His unraveling of the plot stretches credibility at times. I figured out who the murderer was in the early part of the book. I think I mostly stuck with the book because it is a good read and I had to see what became of Pliny. This book will not appeal to Republicans.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars She must've been drunk, March 19, 2002

By 

Dave Schwinghammer "Dave Schwinghammer" (Little Falls, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wheat Field (Hardcover)

Steve Thayer is primarily known for his stories set in St. Paul, Minnesota. The city becomes a character in the novels. He shows us the Cathedral, the Mississippi and its caves, the beautiful homes on Summit Ave. He takes us back to the depression when gangsters, such as Dillenger and the Barker gang, were given free reign in the city.
In The WHEAT FIELD, Thayer moves the setting to the Wisconsin Dells, Kickapoo county. Again he uses the history of the Dells to provide texture for his novel. He mentions Joe McCarthy, who supposedly belonged to the gun club mentioned in the story, and Ed Gein, the murderous ghoul, who dug up corpses in the local graveyard and used their skin to upholster his furniture.
I had high hopes for this novel. It takes guts to make your main character a voyeur, and just a few pages in there's a lurid sex scene. Most of the writing books tell you to make your protagonist a likable character; and who likes peeping Toms? Just a bit on the plot. Two people are murdered in this wheat field in the midst of what looks like a crop circle. They're high school friends of Pliny Pennington, the deputy in charge of the murder investigation. He's in love with the female victim, Maggie Butler. We soon discover that two more of Pennington's high school friends, a senatorial candidate and his wife, were also involved. The evidence points towards a "snuff" film.
We don't really get to know any of these people, other than Pliny. Once more, those pesky book doctors insist that in a thriller there be less of an emphasis on character development, ignoring the danger that the reader just might not care what happens to these people. I also had a hard time with Thayer's choppy writing style. Very short sentences, even during those times when nothing much is happening. There's also implausibility galore. At the end, the setting shifts to Nantucket where we meet a ghost and a bunch of CIA types with a connection to the impending Kennedy assassination. In the acknowledgments, Thayer thanks his agent, the driving force behind the novel. She must've been drunk.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sex, murder and politics along the Dells, April 18, 2003

By 

Douglas De Bono - Author of No Safe Harbor (Minnetonka, mn United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wheat Field (Mysteries & Horror) (Paperback)

I really like reading Steve Thayer's books. I remember after reading SAINT MUDD that I was driving along the St. Paul riverbanks and thinking about the caves used by gangsters.

This time he takes to the Wisconsin Dells and 1960 before the great tourist descent. Once again he writes about places and weaves legend into the story.

The story is written in the first person from the perspective of the investigating deputy. He arrives at the scene of the wheat field murders of Maggie and Michael Butler, who have been blown away by a shotgun in a perfectly formed crop circle.

So is it a murder/suicide, double homicide, something more, something less? Oh and the sordid tale of illicit sex and small town gossip runs rampant through out the story. There are no saints in this novel of deceit and treachery.

We follow the narrative down a road of personal discovery and shocking revelation, and just when you think you've got everything mapped Thayer twists down another avenue of inquiry you hadn't even considered. To give too many details would spoil an outstanding book.

So if I like it so much, why not 5 stars you ask? I just wish the sex would have been less graphic. I can get the idea without all the details.