This mystery/thriller, the first in a planned series, follows Sergeant Riley Fisher when she arrives at the scene of a woman found dead in a corn field. The case becomes personal when Fisher realizes the woman is a childhood friend and reminds Fisher of a dark point in her past she thought she left behind. What starts out as a seemingly straightforward investigation soon branches off as more victims are found and Fisher finds connections to something much larger than the small Midwest town.
TW/CW: cannibalism, drug abuse, medical experimentation, sexual assault (rape) of a minor
The first point I want to make right away is that, in my opinion, the description/cover/title of this book do not in any way indicate just how graphic and violent this book gets. For me, this was a big plus! For other readers, this can be a big problem and I have seen some DNF reviews that had a problem with this exact point. I was expecting a kinda quiet police procedural story set in a rural Midwest town. And while that is the core of the book, the actual crimes depicted and how much of those crimes end up on-page were quite surprising. Most of this book does follow Fisher in her investigation so we get descriptions of the crimes through her but there are a few chapters from other POVs that have a much more direct connection to the darker parts of these crimes and we do see some graphic scenes on page in those chapters. Each reader is going to have different lines in the sand, but for me, the graphic choices Young made in this book never cross the line into gratuitous but I can absolutely see how that would cross the line for other readers. For me, Young walked a really tight line of balancing the graphic nature of the crimes with the investigation and, in the end, I found the payoff to be well-earned.
I loved the characters in this book and I'm so glad the author is planning on making this a series so we can see how the relationships develop. Riley Fisher is the first female sergeant in the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office which is pressure enough. But then when the mutilated body of a local woman shakes the small town, Fisher is faced with even more pressure to find the killer and close the case. We get a great balance between Fisher's professional life and her rocky home life and we see how each affects the other. These different areas pulling on Fisher's time really helped her become a very fleshed out and realistic character. She's flawed and has baggage just like everyone else and we see her deal with these struggles (although with different amounts of success at times). The other characters in the world - the other police officers as well as her family - are also well developed and I especially loved the different types of relationships we see on page. I think this is a complex and interesting group of characters that I'd love to follow into the next book in the series.
The one part that fell flat for me was the integration and connection of wider outside threats to this town. I knew from the description that there was going to be some sort of outside threat or connection which from an overall plot perspective, I think was great. I had some problems with the pacing and actual narrative way those plot points were worked into the story. The first 20% of this book is following Fisher and her investigation. That was a pretty significant portion of the book and was long enough for me, as a reader, to settle in and get comfy with these characters, setting, and plot line. So then, when the next chapter is removed from the town and investigation, it felt very jarring and confusing. Now, I know that this chapter wouldn't be included unless it was important to the story in some way. As the book progresses, we do get more of these other chapters that seemingly follow a different plot line that is completely separate from Fisher's murder investigation. Again, I know as a reader that the plot lines should converge at some point (and they do), but as I was reading these other chapters really felt like they were potholes in the road. They were all pretty short and over quickly, but they disrupted my reading experience and I had a hard time understanding how/why they were a part of the road (overall story). Fisher's plot line probably took up 85% of the story and the other 15% was this other plot line outside of town and this split, for me, was just enough to be disruptive while at the same time not being enough to be pulled into and enjoy that other side of the story. I think if we had gotten this other plot line earlier in the book and it was more significant percentage of the book then that would help the two lines mesh together better. I generally like split POV/plot line stories but this one just didn't come together great for me in the reading experience.
As this is a police procedural, the investigation is really front and center in this book - as it should be. That being said, I think Young's writing style was really engaging and she does a great job of adding in these layers to the writing that help the story feel so much more exciting and eventful than a typical police procedural. For example, I really noticed how much movement the characters have - they're walking around the office, driving to a new scene, multitasking while on the phone, etc. As a lover of police procedurals, I can admit they can get a bit boring in places especially when all the lab tests results, coroner's report, etc start coming in. There can be a good amount of info-dumping going on in those sections and most of that info won't be immediately impactful to the investigation. Young, however, managed to balance all this same info-dumping with so much character movement and other activities happening in the same moment that it never felt like the characters were just sitting around and reading these medical reports aloud. There was also a fantastic way of layering when the information came into the investigation, often while the characters were still actively investigating other leads. Again, this left almost no downtime on the page as the characters were pretty consistently moving from one scene to the next, one interview to the next. There were a lot of good reveals in this story and seeing how all the pieces of these different plot lines came together in the end was fantastic.
The ending to this book is a little over-the-top but I really liked where the story ended up. The second plot line based out of town that I addressed earlier comes barreling in at about the 75% mark and then it is full speed ahead. The ending does veer a bit into political-thriller category and integrates Midwest farming concerns over big-agriculture companies buying out and taking over family farms. I think Young did a really good job weaving in these bigger ideas into what started out as just a small town murder investigation but not all readers are going to appreciate that slight curve in the narrative. I've never lived in a rural small town in Iowa, but based on the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Young spent a good amount of time traveling in the area and talking with local police officers and politicians to get a better grasp on the issues that people living in these towns experience (which is impressive considering Young resides in Brighton, England). I really enjoyed the way the different plot lines all came together in the end and while this is the planned first book in a series, all the major lines are wrapped up pretty neatly so it can 100% be read as a standalone.
Overall, I really enjoyed this read! I loved the characters, investigation, and the graphic depths the story surprised me with. I had a little bit of trouble with the way the chapters on other plot line were integrated in the story but I think the ending payoff was well earned. This was a really surprising read and I loved how the story veered off in an unexpected direction a few times. I look forward to reading more books in this series in the future.
Thanks NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC
Expected publication date is January 25, 2022
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