Sergeant Riley Fisher has been put lead on a case involving a victim that she was previously connected too, however it doesn’t stop there. More victims show up and it appears they are dealing with a cannibal serial killer. There is so many details on this book and I can understand why it has been called a mashup of The Pelican Brief and Silence of the Lambs.

If you are looking for an intriguing, make you think, mystery/thriller involving cannibalism with a potential twist on how this could possibly involve a Governor…this is for you!!

I am definitely looking forward to seeing where Riley goes in the future.

Thank you flatiron books and NetGalley for my gifted copy. ( )

I was looking forward to reading this book.
Disappointing.
Too many characters, repetitious.
Dragging..
Could not finish. ( )

This is a really well-written crime thriller, but I, unfortunately, didn't find a ton of originality in it. Many of the characters are holdovers from decades of crime novels before it -- the hard-ass Sheriff, the new detective working on her first big case, etc. It just rang too familiar, and with a genre as saturated as crime originality is key.

That's not to say this book is totally devoid of original ideas, but the stuff the author does come up with -- particularly in the third act -- felt very removed from the rest of the book and honestly took me out of the story. There's one particular development in the last 20 or 30 pages that made me put the book down for a few minutes.

Still, the prose is crisp and clean and the story is engaging, even if it feels like a rerun of a show I watched a while back. ( )

The body of a young wife is found in an Iowa cornfield. Her wounds make it a clear case of homicide, but why? Complicating the investigation is that the lead detective, Sergeant Riley Fisher, was a childhood friend of the victim, though they became estranged as adults for reasons that are only hinted at through the first two-thirds of the book.

As Sergeant Fisher and her team search for clues, they discover disturbing evidence that seems to indicate an outside-the-box motive: The cornfield where the victim was found is owned by an upstart farm cooperative who have developed an organic corn hybrid that could threaten the corporate agriculture interests that dominate the state's economy and politics. Is it just a coincidence that the victim's husband is a research scientist for one of those Big Ag companies?

This is a decent thriller/police procedural, a fair bit more gory than most of the genre that I've read lately. The author created some compelling characters, and Riley was an appealing protagonist. As an Iowan, I loved the idea of a storyline that sets up Big Ag as the possible villain, but unfortunately the potential was more potent than the reality. The plot got a bit convoluted and increasingly melodramatic in the final section, and that diluted its impact for me.

All indications are that this is the opening book of what will become a series centered around Riley Fisher, and I think it sets the stage well for a continuation. I think there are a lot of possibilities in the character and the setting, and I look forward to seeing what Erin Young brings us next. Perhaps the next scenario could make use of the fact that hogs outnumber people 7:1 in this state, with all the good and bad that entails.

A final, minor observation: I'm pretty familiar with the area that is depicted in the book (Black Hawk County) and I thought it was portrayed realistically by the author. But there were several instances where some of her dialogue and exposition about farming rang a false note. For example, one of the Iowa farmers refers to the crops he grows as "vegetables, soy and dent corn." Iowans might calls them soybeans, or most often just beans, but I don't think many would refer to the staple crop as "soy". (I also mostly hear people refer to "field corn," but dent corn is also used frequently.) This particular mystery was solved for me when I saw the author is from England. The on-site research she mentions in her Acknowledgments section clearly paid off in most ways, but it's those pesky details that are hard to pin down. Still, no one who isn't intimately familiar with American agriculture would (or should) be fazed by these very minor slips.
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Set in rural Iowa where a young woman’s body is found in a cornfield. It’s a family farm which is competing with one of the big giants of agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher discovers the woman was a childhood friend, she soon gets herself embroiled into the investigation and the bodies begin to mount up.

I’m in two minds about how I feel about this book. On the one hand it’s quite a gripping thriller, but on the other it’s a little too political for my tastes. I found it a slog at times. I thought the setting was well depicted and atmospheric. It’s also well written. The plot, however, is somewhat complicated and concentration is needed. There are a few surprises along the way. I’m not a big fan of police procedural novels or serial killer chillers, but I can see that this one would appeal to quite a few enthusiasts of this genre. A worthy debut, all in all. ( )