Customer Reviews

The Wheat Field

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

OK, let me get this out of the way up-front. I have a soft spot for Steve Thayer books. We grew up in the same neighborhood, just blocks away from each other. He graduated with my older sister. I have read everyone of his books out of loyalty, and generally love them.OK, I feel better now. I can go on with my review.

Do not read ANY of Steve Thayer books if you dislike gratuitous sex and violence. Particularily this one. Steve's writing style is filled with this type of writing, and by the time I got done reading this book, I began to wonder why.

Good story and excellent premise if you can take lots of, again, sex and violence. The problem I had with this book was the hard left turn it took at the end. It came together, but it wasn't exactly plausible. The main character was, well, a character. He had issues. The problem with this story was that whether it was intentional or not, the guy had a lot of mystery. His issues were left with a lot of loose ends. The ending wasn't near as satisfying as some of his other stuff.

Steve Thayer isn't exactly the best writer there is, but he tells and excellent stories. This is no exception. But, even though I'm no prude by any means, the porn in this story was a little off-putting, even to me.

If you like Steve Thayer, you'll like this story. It just wasn't his best.

While not up to his usual (very high) standard, THE WHEAT FIELD is a good read. It is also predictably Thayeresque, which is to say, unpredictable. Hints are dropped that the narrator may not be the standup guy we have been led to believe, but someone quite different, someone dark. The plot twists and zigzags with no loss of plausibility and the ending is satisfying. Thayer has moved his setting from Minnesota to Wisconsin and his descriptions of the Dells and the Madison campus are accurate and effective. THE WHEAT FIELD lacks the ambitions of SAINT MUDD, THE WEATHERMAN, and the very impressive SILENT SNOW, but it is solid work, both sexy and suspenseful.

Murder and politics equal excitement, which is precisely what Steve Thayer generously serves in his fifth novel, "The Wheat Field."

It is 1960, the year of Nixon's presidential campaign, and the setting is supposedly serene Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin. Serenity isn't in the air or, for that matter, in the wheat field where the naked bodies of Maggie and Michael Butler are found by a local farmer. They both have been shot - is it a murder/suicide?

Deputy Pliny Pennington, who has been in love with the once gorgeous Maggie since high school days, doesn't think so. Questions abound, such as the condition of the field. The wheat has been evenly pressed down in a circle around the bodies with no evidence of tire or foot tracks. Stranger yet is the fact that there is no clothing nearby, yet both bodies apparently left this world as they came into it.

Sheriff Fats soon arrives on the scene along with Trooper Russ Hoffmeyer who confides that he was once invited to join a menage a trois with Maggie and Michael. While Pliny is chagrined to hear that there are even more shocking revelations in the offing. Some of these dangerous secrets involve the most prominent citizens in Kickapoo Falls.

Thayer masterfully unravels his tale against a backdrop of Wisconsin politics and personal foibles.

- Gail Cooke

The sexually charged novel is a work of art. You pick up the book thinking it to be a cute and inspiring dime novel. You open to the first pages to find your self in a whirl wind of humanity at it's most vicious. The nostalgic Deputy Pliny Pennington is retired now writing the chapters of his life at his boat house off of Wisconsin. He finds himself entwined in the passion and the horror of his past as Deputy Sheriff Pennington. He steps into a circle of wheat to find the gore of his beloved Maggie Butler, a travel agent who was the love of Pliny's life as well as a renowned devilish beauty. Beside her with his crouch blown into a blivion, the Prominent Travel Company entrepreneour ( Maggie also was involved with Butler Travels, their business) Michael Butler. We find the town turning on odds and ends with the Deputy who was still pining for dear Maggie. Pliny is a pecualiar man with war wounds that are also referred to and described in the sequel which is even better and even more alluring that this novel. He's good with a rifle. A sniper in the war days. He finds himself in a predicament eventually bringing him on thin ropes to a Nazi from his past when pulled into the sequel...things are about to get shaky in Kickapoo falls. Caren sprague a younger more amped up version of maggie who i smarried to senator webster sprague, leads him onto the answers needed to solv the quandary of the town.He soon finds himself in a ring of gold a ring of sex a ring of murder, and it's all on film. In denile, Pliny wants to believe maggie hadn't delved into matters beyond her control. Dark arts that led to her "death"...in the end, we find pliny in a situation he'd never thought possible. You must read this novel, and when you're done check out WOLF PASS the sequel.. Steve Thay has a way with description and human emotion. He pulls the right strings on this puppet show. All i can say is read it...

It'll kick your ass.

"The Wheat Field" is one of those books you read and when you're done, you ask yourself, was this worth the time. Ultimately, in spite of the book's flaws, it has a dark noirish feel, and Thayer pulls some surprises, and yet are they really that surprising? If you think about it, the main surprise is pretty obvious, but even though you may think about it early on, you don't quite think it's so.
The setting of 1960 is a unique one, and its inclusion of the Nixon-Kennedy presidential campaign is not only historically significant, but intricate to the plot.
The main problem is the narrator himself, Pliny Pennington. He doesn't seem all that heroic, at least in the traditional sense. He seems to have a low moral code; a self-pitying attitude about his sexual inadequacies; and a thirst for vengeance. Also, he is an out and out voyeur. His love for the victim, Maggie, seems like one of those adolescent crushes left unfulfilled, and what did he really see in her anyway. The rest of the characters are all as deep as a trickle of water, so you end up not really caring about any of them. There really isn't one likeable character in the whole book. So, with that in mind, it's to Thayer's credit that it's still an okay read, just not as good as his previous works.
There are many better books out there to read, folks. Check out "Swan Song" by Robert McCammon or any Michael Connelly books.

The previous reviews, good or bad, just about sum up this book.

I am using the criteria for judging this by considering its genre: a detective thriller. This is not a deep book, but action-packed with interesting plot twists.

His descriptions of the Dells and Madison, Wisconsin are quite beautiful and especially of interest if you have been to the area. They made me want to see the Dells. The book describes sexual behavior a bit over the top unusual in a mystery novel.

He also describes a type of community and characters I'm not familiar with but are plausible in this strange world.

I was driven to read this book to the end as fast as possible because I really wanted to know what happened. And a lot happens in the many plot twists.

"She was a witch. She was a whore." These lines in the opening prologue of this novel gave me the sense "The Wheat Field" could be what we might call "pulp fiction" or "hard-boiled." On that level, this novel really delivers the same way a big budget disaster movie delivers - a lot of fun but forgettable once it ends.

Things start off simply enough - a man and a woman are found brutally murdered in a wheat field of a small Wisconsin town where everyone knows each other. Several characters are then introduced and the novel turns a bit more complex as each of them could have played a role in the murder, including the narrator of the book who is the cop assigned to solve the case.

We have it all - a leading character with a dark and haunting past, lots of sex, greedy and powerful men who use their money to get what they want, wild women who use their bodies to get what they want, even more sex, political intrigue, and several twists and turns that make you question if the good guys are really the bad guys and vice versa. Oh, and did I mention there is a lot of sex in the novel?

I read this book over a span of only a few days as I took my 30 minute train ride to work each day. It had me hooked and definitely passed the time. I found it enjoyable and "breezy" reading despite the author asking you to go far over the edge of plausibility during the last 80 pages or so.

One suggestion in regards to the age of those considering reading this. A freind of mine considers some books to be "Vietnam War novels." Meaning, only read it if you are old enough to remember the Vietnam War. With the action taking place during the 1960 presidential election, I am not sure I would have enjoyed this if I hadn't just qualified for AARP membership.

All in all, I believe that if you like simple, fast paced novels with "quick" dialog(Ed McBain's 87th precinct and Robert Parker's Spencer styles come to mind), then take a look into "The Wheat Field."