REVIEW:

Quick checklist to determine if Erin Young’s debut crime thriller, The Fields, is the right book for you:

• Do you live in Iowa?

• Can you stomach extremely graphic depictions of postmortem bodies, like those found in Karin Slaughter novels… but taken up a notch?

• Are you interested in the political debate about Big Agriculture and GMOs?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then oh boy this is your holy grail piece of fiction right here! Bodies are turning up in cornfields and barns and such, decomposing and full of maggots, and the motivation behind the killer might just be related to agricultural espionage.

Now listen, I’m from Iowa. Author Erin Young is not. She sure took notes while visiting the state though and packed her novel with alllll the Iowa things: State Fair butter cow, Maid Rite, Hawkeye sweatshirts, and lest we forget… FARMS! Yes, we do in fact grow stuff here. And yes, there are little farms and big farms, and GMO companies have a very big presence. As referenced in the book, other countries like China have indeed been caught trying to steal seeds from our soil and replicate them. Gotta feed the world, amiright!

If that last paragraph bored you, The Fields is probably too immersed in the world of agricultural politics to hold your interest. But if you’re like, heck yes, I want to dig into that and see characters take it to such extremes that people are being mutilated as a result, get yourself to a bookstore and buy it! Then preorder the follow up, since this is part one of a series featuring Sergeant Riley Fisher.

My thanks to Flatiron Books for the gifted review copy via NetGalley and the invitation to participate in the blog tour for this release. The Fields is now available.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

A breakneck procedural that is beautifully written and masterfully crafted, Erin Young's The Fields is a dynamite debut—crime fiction at its very finest.

Some things don't stay buried.

It starts with a body—a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture.

When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, arrives on the scene, an already horrific crime becomes personal when she discovers the victim was a childhood friend, connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind.

The investigation grows complicated as more victims are found. Drawn deeper in, Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.