Steve Thayer

This murder story involving voyeurism, partner swapping, and sex films made me feel like I was a voyeur myself for finishing it. Oh, yes, it also involved local politics and an attempt on JFK's life. The writing is well organized, and is quite a psychological perspective on the wounded deputy who is the first person narrator.
I thought I'd enjoy a book set in my home state, but this is quite a weird presentation of who we are by a Minnesotan.

This is probably the best thing I read in two months. It's got some plot elements that are sensational -- 1950's pornography, threesomes, presidential assassinations, small town conspiracies -- but it's well-written and quite thrilling. It's not quite a mystery, not quite a thriller. But the story is good, and that's good enough for me. I only wish he did fantasy. :)

There are hardly ever any murders in Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin - bucolic vacation retreat in the Wisconsin Dells, and home of the politically powerful Kickapoo Gunn Club. In 1960 however, the naked bodies of a married couple - Michael and Maggie Butler - are found in a wheat field; viciously shot to death. It falls to Deputy P. A. Pennington, the trusted number-two man in the Kickapoo Falls Sheriff's Department, to find the killer.

Pliny had been in love with Maggie Butler ever since show more childhood, admiring her from afar for years, and watching as she eventually married another man. However, he has a hard time holding on to his fantasy of her, as he begins to discover what she was mixed up with in reality.

The oddness of the murder scene - both bodies are found within a perfect circle of crushed wheat, with absolutely no footprints or tire tracks to be found at the scene - combined with the fact that the couple's clothes are missing, and Maggie is wearing only her wedding ring but not her class ring as well; strikes Pliny as incredibly strange. The only clues that he has to work with are a Lucky Strike cigarette butt found lying near the bodies and three perfect holes in the flattened wheat.

The motive appears to Pliny to be sexual in nature; a belief which is corroborated when Trooper Russ Hoffmeyer, one of the investigators at the scene, admits to taking part in a menage a trois with Michael and Maggie Butler in the past. Their entire sexual encounter had been filmed and, according to Trooper Hoffmeyer, that film was now missing.

Pliny finds that the closer he gets to the truth, the tighter that the town's ruling elite closes ranks against him. Almost as if following some shadowy master plan, the sheriff, his one-time mentor, begins to turn against him and Pliny becomes the main murder suspect; in danger of being arrested for the double homicide. He is convinced that the answer lies hidden in the wheat field, and in a missing reel of movie film - that will ultimately shut the door on a murder investigation, but immediately open another one onto a deadly election night conspiracy.

I really enjoyed reading this book. In my opinion, the plot was thoroughly intriguing and moved along very quickly. I avidly wanted to learn the murderer's identity, and was enmeshed in the the story until I finally understood their motive. I give this book a definite A+! show less

From Amazon:

It's the dead of winter, and a serial killer has frozen a city in fear...
Television newscaster Andrea Labore sees it as a career-making story...
He's called The Weatherman. And he's going to make Andrea a star...
Even if it kills her.

My Thoughts:

Steve Thayer obviously did a very thorough research about news casting, police investigation and meteorology before writing this book, and it shows.
On the other hand, the story line isn't very good. I'm not sure whether this is a murder show more investigation story involving a news station or a story about the dynamics of a newsroom with a background story of a serial killer, but the 2 very prominent story lines doesn't give a feeling of a 'focused' story. The time gaps between the different parts of the book also makes it hard to read. By the end of the story I was still unsure who committed the crime. The author tantalizingly hinted that a serial killer in another state entirely had committed the crimes Dixon Bell was convicted of. There were sub-stories of the other characters that cluttered the novel...not to mention the font in the copy I had was about 8pt. So...intriguing story but for the above mentioned points 3 stars instead of 5. show less