THE BIG THAW

Literature & Fiction

HARSTAD, Donald

Literary

Fourth Estate

With James Patterson's feel for narrative drive combined with Joseph Wambaugh's ability to cut to the quick of police procedure, Donald Harstad is a fresh new voice in crime fiction. And with twenty-six years of experience as a deputy sheriff in a rural Iowa town, Harstad knows whereof he speaks. Inspired by actual events, Eleven Days takes readers on a gripping and unforgettable journey inside a heartland community and unveils its darkest secrets. Iowa highway patrolman and deputy sheriff Carl Houseman is comfortable with his night-shift routine of speeding tickets and slow crawls through Nation County's two-stoplight towns. This is not to say that Nation County's Sheriff's Department--fueled by doughnuts, countless pots of coffee, and down-home disregard for the bizarre--hasn't had its trials and tribulations. But Houseman is in for the time of his life when a quiet weekend evening turns into eleven sleepless days after a 911 call from a terrified woman hits his dispatcher's office. Upon arrival at the crime scene--a deserted farmhouse that even Hitchcock wouldn't be able to duplicate--Houseman finds the woman gone and the owner slaughtered and mutilated. Down the lane, another farmhouse contains the bodies of four more victims, tortured before their deaths and all bearing the markings of a Satanic sacrifice. As the investigation gathers momentum, the dirty little secrets underneath the placid surface of the quaint Iowa community are revealed, and Houseman ends up fighting for his life against a force of unimaginable horror. Houseman's first-person narrative--terse, drawling, and unexpectedly funny--provides an irresistible invitation to a wild ride in the passenger seat of his patrol car. Buckle up.

Eleven Days: A Novel of the Heartland

United States

DOUBLEDAY

With a singular voice, a spellbinding insider perspective on small-town heartland crime-solving, and a cast of characters straight out of a Coen brothers movie, Known Dead solidifies Donald Harstad's growing reputation as the finest new voice in crime fiction. No one knows the underbelly of Nation County, Iowa, better than Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman. But with thirteen hundred-odd miles of hills and curves to negotiate in the county's 750-square-mile border, there's only so much territory he can cover in an eight-hour shift. Time passes slowly riding alone, but when lives are measured in seconds and backup could be hours away, one false move can get a cop killed. In Known Dead, Carl hits the ground running when he hears the call sign "officer needs assistance." As the blistering summer sun beats down on him, Carl steps into the middle of a war zone in an isolated and densely wooded patch of land. With two known dead and sixty-seven empty shell casings from any number of high-powered weapons, Carl has no clue about why or where the guns are pointing. Sheriff Lamar Ridgeway and DCI agent Hester Gorse are on their way, but Carl knows he's riding point; and for the life of him, he can't separate the killers from the kill. Filled with deadpan humor and brilliant police procedural narrative, Known Dead could only have been written by a man who's been in a heartland patrol car himself.

Known Dead

On the heels of the Anthony Award--nominated Eleven Days and the critically acclaimed Known Dead, The Big Thaw is homegrown heartland thrills from Iowa's own answer to Michael Connelly. Donald Harstad writes the way Iowans live, with no-nonsense direction, an innate sense of right and wrong, and a dry Midwestern brand of humor. In today's urban-dominated thriller landscape, Harstad is working the rural crime beat to perfection. While battling a grueling thirty-below-zero Iowa January, Carl Houseman is baffled by a series of burglaries in the deserted backwoods farms of Nation County. The Iowa snowbirds have flown south, leaving their houses and valuables for the taking. The last thing Carl wants to do is leave the comfort of his toasty kitchen, stocked with a full pot of coffee and a plate full of low-fat donuts. But when news of a high-speed chase warbles out of his police scanner, he knows there is no one else to pick up the slack and join in the pursuit. Little does he know that the suspected cat burglar tearing up the back roads is not running from the police. He's running from what he found at the seemingly abandoned farm of Cletus Borglan, Maitland's answer to Bill Gates. Carl thinks he's seen it all in his twenty-odd-year career as deputy sheriff of Nation County, but this time the bad guys are uncannily intelligent. For the men lying low at the Borglan compound have much bigger plans than penny-ante robbery. They're waiting for a break in the weather to pull off a masterful siege of Nation County's biggest economic asset--the Colonel Beauregard, a floating casino on the Mississippi River.

The Big Thaw: A Novel

With his dead-on depictions of the rural crime beat in such critically acclaimed novels as Eleven Days, Known Dead, and The Big Thaw, Donald Harstad proved himself to be a master of the police procedural and a keen observer of the intrigues and eccentricities of the American heartland. In Code Sixty-one, Harstad furthers his talents, bringing his offbeat, Fargoesque style to a gripping tale about modern-day vampires. Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague’s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman uncovers a group that has transformed the dark fantasies of vampire legendinto grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another’s blood. As Houseman and his partner, Hester Gorse, are drawn deeper into this alternate, alien world, they come to the chilling conclusion that the dead young woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula. Their prime suspect, Dan Peal, is a sinister and commanding presence within the group, but without proof to substantiate such a heinous theory, the trail is in danger of running cold. When their suspicions are bolstered by the report of a card-carrying vampire-hunter who is also pursuing Peal, Houseman and Gorse suddenly find themselves scrambling to track the vampire before he kills again. A spellbinding journey into the dark recesses of the modern-day heartland, Code Sixty-one unfolds with relentless speed and precision. Veteran police officer and author Donald Harstad continues to craft his work from the fabric of personal experience and insider know-how, cutting to the quick of well-imagined fiction, rattling nerves along the way.

Code Sixty-One

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

In the American heartland, someone is killing cops. The ambush exploded in an Iowa marijuana field. The weapons were high caliber. The pot was high grade. And the reporters said afterward: "We have two known dead...." Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman knew the dead all right: One was a small-time doper, the other a good cop. But Houseman doesn't know why they died, or who cut them down in a blaze of automatic rifle fire. Now, as the Feds descend on Nation County, Houseman and his fellow cops are suddenly walking point--searching for answers amidst the violence, treachery, and evil in their own backyard.... Donald Harstad's Eleven Days was called "a hell of a first novel" by Michael Connelly and "truly frightening" by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his electrifying new novel Harstad captures with nerve-shattering power an Iowa police department's harrowing search through a killing storm--to know the truth about the dead and the living alike....

Known Dead: A Novel (Carl Houseman)

Genre Fiction

Bantam]

CODE 61: maintain radio silence. someone may be listening. Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague’s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman is startled to uncover a group that transforms the dark fantasies of vampire legend into grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another’s blood. As Carl is drawn deeper into this unnerving world, it becomes clear that the dead woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula. The prime suspect, Dan Peale, is a sinister presence within the group--a man some say drinks blood and never, ever dies. It’s an outlandish, heinous theory, but then suspicions are bolstered by rumors of a card-carrying vampire hunter who is also pursuing Peale. All too soon, Houseman finds himself scrambling to track a vampire--before he kills again.

Code 61 (Carl Houseman)

In a mesmerizing debut, cop-turned-author Donald Harstad uses real-life events to paint a jarring picture of crime in America's heartland--where two-stoplight towns no longer offer refuge from modern-day brutality. Life in Maitland, Iowa, is usually predictable, even for a cop. But all that changes the day Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman's dispatcher receives the terrifying 911 call. The day cops find the mutilated bodies at a remote farmhouse. The first of eleven days Carl will never forget. As hotshot investigators fly in from New York, Carl and his fellow cops use old-fashioned detective work to piece together clues. But to turn suspicions into suspects, Carl must search among his closest friends to find a killer who has shocked and bewildered cops who'd thought they'd seen it all. And before it's over, Carl will be forced into an unrelenting spiral of chaos, coming face-to-face with evil he never dreamed could exist in Maitland...or anywhere else.

Eleven Days (Carl Houseman)

A killer is placing his cross hairs over the American heartland.... The pair of frozen corpses were found under a tarp in the machine shed of an empty farmhouse. Two males -- brothers -- both killed by bullets from a Russian automatic fired at close range. The cops have a suspect: a man Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman busted five years earlier and the county's lead suspect in a series of recent robberies. Houseman knows they have the wrong guy. He also knows they've got something bigger than a burglary gone bad ... especially when the FBI starts showing up in Maitland. The brutal double homicide is just the tip of the iceberg in a case where a killer's trail keeps disappearing like footprints in freshly fallen snow, and where one bad break can send a good cop into a deep freeze.

The Big Thaw (Carl Houseman)

The Big Thaw

Thomas T. Beeler

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