Eleven Days - Softcover

Harstad, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857028163 ISBN 13: 9781857028164

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 1998

Synopsis

Iowa PD Blue. Eleven Days is a fast paced, grisly, bloody and wry police procedural thriller that reads like a mixture of Fargo and The Poet. Written by a former deputy sheriff on his vacation, in eleven days, the story covers the solving of a horrific satanic cult murder in farmland Iowa in just – eleven days.

The first Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman knows of the murder case that will take over his life for the next eleven days is when a call comes into his Nation County police department from an unidentified source, believed female, possibly under fifty. No call back number . "Help us," she says, "they’re killing everybody!" Spread over two remote farms amidst the cornfields of Iowa, Carl eventually finds four bodies – one man with his hand chopped off – but no sign of the female caller. Another body is on his back, legs secured to the bed wtih black cord. He’s been castrated and black wax poured into into eyes. His tongue is missing and there’s a substance around his mouth which looks like dried super glue. Female FBI Special Agent Hester Gorse comments: "You don’t suppose they tried to glue his tongue back on, do you?" Along with Hester, a dyslexic investigator called Theo, a sassy radio dispatcher called Sally, his long suffering schoolteacher wife and numerous Iowa cops who may never have encountered a murder in their lives, Carl somehow manages to collar the perpetrator in just eleven days.

About this title

Review:

‘A hell of a first novel.’ Michael Connelly
‘A major achievement and thriller debut by an ex-cop; a novel that smells and feels right.’ Time Out
‘Harstad’s books are terrific and really capture the atmosphere of small-town America, where the twentieth century almost seems to have slipped by unnoticed.’ Independent on Sunday

‘Harstad’s first-hand experience ensures his storytelling always rings true.’ Arena

‘The Big Thaw, set in the dead of winter in a Fargo-like mid-west, is American procedural writing at its best.’ Guardian

From the Back Cover:

Maitland sheriff's Department, Iowa

Friday, April 19, 1996
23:52 hours

The call came into County Communications from an unidentified source, believed female, possibly under fifty. No callback number was given and no further contact was noted.

'Sheriff's Department' 'My God, my God, help us here, help us here, please...'

First to arrive at the crime scene, Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman finds the woman gone and the owner of the farm slaughtered, mutilated. Down the lane, in another isolated house, three more bodies, each bearing evidence of extreme torture and violent death. Assisted by a dyslexic investigator, a sassy radio dispatcher and FBI Special Agent Hester Gorse, Houseman embarks on an investigation, fuelled by doughnuts and countless pots of coffee, that threatens to uncover the sinister secrets hidden beneath the placid surface of a small Iowa farming community, and chage it forever – in just eleven days.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1857028163
• ISBN 13: 9781857028164
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304