A Long December - Softcover

Harstad, Donald

4.06

272 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590710401 ISBN 13: 9781590710401

Publisher: Rugged Land, 2005

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A Long December:

American crime fiction’s best-kept secret–as if Michael Connelly had
spent twenty-six years as a small-town cop in Iowa–has written his
breakout book.

Brief Description:

The people of Nation County, Iowa–a heartland town straight out of a
Coen Brothers movie or a John Cougar Mellencamp song–practice a
unique brand of American stoicism. You betcha. And they rely upon
their public servants to shield them from the horrors of the outside
world. Carl Houseman, deputy sheriff of the 750-square-mile county,
dedicates his life to keeping his citizenry so secure that you can leave
the door unlocked at home and walk his streets with a big hello and a
smile to every stranger. On Houseman’s watch, the mounting terrors
of the new world order stay far away.

But December 2001 could change all of that. Outsiders are everywhere.
The meat plant is now kosher and there are more Jewish fellows per
capita than any other place in the country. Hispanic and other foreign
workers, with dubious immigration papers, have taken jobs from the
locals. Eighteen other languages are now spoken within the tiny region,
and Carl and company can’t speak a single one.

Then the eighty-odd-year-old Heinman brothers’ call comes in from
their farm down in Frog Hollow. They’ve witnessed an execution-style
killing not one hundred yards from their pig feeders. The victim’s awful
dead and half his head’s been blown off. The boys haven’t seen nothing
like it since Normandy. When Carl gets to the scene, he believes them.

What follows is a masterful police procedural thriller–think Joe
Wambaugh crossed with Fargo–written with a singular and authentic
voice that has electrified readers around the world.

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About the Author:

Donald Harstad is a twenty-six year veteran of the Clayton County Sheriff's Department in northeastern Iowa where he was a former deputy sheriff. He is the author of three earlier crime stories featuring Carl Houseman: ELEVEN DAYS, THE KNOWN DEAD and THE BIG THAW.

From Publishers Weekly:

A bungling group of terrorists try to poison the beef shipped from an Iowa meat plant in the fifth installment of Harstad's Carl Houseman series of police procedurals (Code Sixty-One, etc.). Though buoyed by its engagingly homespun first-person narration and keen sense of place, the novel suffers from an idling plot that is sometimes frustratingly underdeveloped. Houseman, second in command of the Nation County Sheriff's Department, is investigating an execution-style killing in a remote corner of his jurisdiction. The victim is Latino, one of hundreds of recent immigrants to descend on Nation County who have irked the natives by taking local jobs and injecting a form of multiculturalism that doesn't go over well in rural Iowa. Houseman, along with sidekick state agent Hester Gorse, tie the victim and the killer to the new kosher meat plant in neighboring Battenberg, which is now reeling from the discovery that several sides of beef have been poisoned with the toxic substance ricin. Fortunately, there's been only one death so far-that of the inept terrorist who apparently sprayed the poison on himself as well as the beef. Yet Houseman and others suspect the worst: that Islamic fundamentalists have invaded the heartland with a new strategy to kill Jews. Harstad, a 26-year veteran of Iowa law enforcement, steers his plot to a fine shoot-'em-up ending, yet much of this procedural gets bogged down in procedures that are both predictable and fail to advance the action. Worse, Harstad never fully explains who the terrorists are nor identifies their ultimate goal. Nevertheless, his laid-back Midwestern voice and descriptive skills carry the story and prove again that he has the tools to carve a niche of his own in crime fiction.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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