This is a good start to series. I liked Riley a lot and look forward to learning more about her in the next installment.

Seeing one mentioned in the synopsis for The Fields, I knew that I wanted to read this debut Crime Thriller. It was on these cycle rides that I found the inspiration for Riley’s house—a crumbling old Victorian property on the edge of a creek, where she lives with her troubled brother, Ethan. And where her rebellious niece, Maddie, first started speaking in my mind. The heat was sapping. Many days it was overcast, but over one hundred degrees, with high humidity. Not only a great crime novel, but a sizzling and timely description of a collapsing corn-belt community. Riley Fisher is a hero we can all root for Basically this is a novel with an agenda. Big Agriculture against little farmers and all of the bad things that they do to drive out the little guys. While I'm sure a lot of this may be true, I didn't really want to read a book based on these political issues. I have no idea how much research the author did or if all of this is just fiction. She has a dark cloud hanging over her, a bit of a secret history, and I really want to know what that's all about. I'm hoping in the next book she'll spill it.Her protean worlds of fiction work well for Young. Whether she’s using Robyn to promote her historical fiction or Erin to brand her new American crime novels (she’s working on an Iowa sequel), Young has proven she’s versatile with genres as well as pseudonyms. There was potential in the story, I originally thought it might have been inspired by the murder of Mollie Tibbetts a few years ago, but it gets bogged down with political intrigue over seed technology, Big Ag, and more talk of corn than I had in my high school environmental science class. Good writing is good writing whether it is for historical novels set across the pond (well, across for us in the Western Hemisphere. For her, living in Brighton, no pond crossing is needed.) or for a gritty thriller set in America’s heartland. Young has made the transition smoothly, with an engaging procedural-cum-political-thriller, featuring a strong lead, a diverse supporting cast, well-paced action, and plenty of mystery to keep one’s curiosity on high alert, all while offering a bit of information about the world, and highlighting very real issues concerning Big Agriculture. I am looking forward to the further fleshing out of Riley’s story and those of her supporting cast. Seeds have been planted. The soil is fertile. The shoots are emerging for the Riley Fisher series, and look very promising. A bountiful annual harvest is forecast. Volume #2 will be set in Des Moines. I am betting that when she writes it, readers will come. The lifeblood of rural America was being drained, leaving husks of cities, where poverty and crime rushed in to fill the void. It was a legacy all too visible in the boarded-up factories and processing plants that loomed like broken t

Riley’s mystery begins with the find of a dead body in one of the cornfields. The death is surprising, but not as surprising as the cause. The identification becomes personal to Riley and before she can answer the “who did it”, another death takes place. The cases turn up the heat on Riley and emotions and stress bring things to a boiling point. Is Riley equipped to handle the pressure? Before we get started, can I just say that I find corn fields to be terrifying. There's just something about them; I can't. Who knows what is lurking in there... I received an ARE of The Fields from Flatiron in return for a review that was not too horribly corny. Well, I tried, ok. Thanks, too to NetGalley for facilitating. The Fields by Erin Young will be published in the United States by Flatiron Books, a division of Macmillan Publishing, and goes on sale on January 25, 2022. Just as surely as Mare of Easttown brilliantly tweaked the police procedural format, so does Erin Young in her lean-limbed, gripping new novel, the first in a series...Young's plot blazes outward like a prairie fire as the body count mounts and Riley's own past surges into the present, testing her instincts in crime scene after crime sceneFisher is a credibly drawn lead, and this is a series that, if it can plough a distinctive furrow, may go on to put down roots. The sharp prose and explosive plot immediately drew me in, but the richly textured exploration of life in rural America stayed with me long after I finished. This is a classic crime series in the making’ British writers have had a tough go of it trying to break into the US crime market in a big way. But that’s because, says England’s top thriller writer Peter James, American readers are not familiar with the slang and terminology of British law enforcement. The story centered around Riley Fisher who recently becomes sergeant at her young age, investigating the dead girl’s murder who is found at the cornfield. Actually the girl was her childhood friend. But the murders don’t stop and she starts suspecting there’s a serial killer out there with ulterior motives and if she really wants to catch him, she needs to face her own skeletons in the closet. She has to dig more the biggest and ugliest secrets of townies against raising political threats and intimidating manners of her own folks. THE FIELDS is a cleverly conceived crime novel that brings to mind the work of Karin Slaughter and Robert Dugoni."

My thanks to Flatiron Publishing, as well as to NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of The Fields! This book is dubbed as a debut crime thriller for the author, but please note that she also writes under Robyn Young and has written quite a few historical fiction books. It is no wonder that the writing is very polished and well done in this book. Young has honed her craft and it shows. Riley dives deep into this investigation. After all, it's personal and soon finds herself in a dangerous world of politics and very big business. Not a comfortable place to be by any means. TRIGGER WARNING: THIS NOVEL IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND VIOLENT WITH WHAT I THOUGHT WERE UNNECESSARY DETAILS. Murder, politics, family secrets, an iconic main character, and a fiendish plot. What's not to love?' Laura Shepherd-Robinson, author of Blood & SugarIT STARTS WITH A BODY-a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture.

To research THE FIELDS, Young embarked on a journey across Iowa that took her through large swaths of the state’s famed farmland.

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Two things about the book didn’t work so well for me: third narration storytelling and lots of characters I barely keep their names on my mind. Can you stomach extremely graphic depictions of postmortem bodies, like those found in Karin Slaughter novels… but taken up a notch? Even though Riley and Chloe went their separate ways in their teen years, Riley is still rattled to the core by her estranged friend's tragic death. I’m still rounding up my 3.5 stars to 4 town politics, agricultural rivalry, secrets, lies, brutal murders stars for promising start of it.