Flint, Flour, Dent, Pod, Sweet, Pop, and Waxy

22. The Fields – Erin Young

All right, so, it’s not going to be a surprise that for someone actually from Iowa with a farming family and who has worked adjacent to the investigation of crime this did not read as “authentic.” Bits and pieces did, but the main voice I found in the writing was someone trying so very hard to sound authentic and failing.

For one, this Riley Fisher character should know that Iowa State’s campus is not in downtown Des Moines where she said she was… I feel like it’s quite noticeable in downtown Des Moines that you are not in Ames, or on a college campus, as I have been there several times. And, yes, I know the author may have found her research about agricultural sabotage and the Chinese visit to Iowa in the 1980s very interesting, but, she stuck way too much about hybrid seeds and sabotage in here. Way too much. Once again, my family is in farming and has been for over 100 years and I worked at a farming implement company’s archive where I saw photos from that very same Chinese visit and I can think of several seed company names without having to look them up and I like explaining things like the difference between microfilm and microfiche and I still thought it was too much. I felt it was just stuck in because once you do a ton of research, you don’t want to leave it behind. I understand and I also understand there may not have been an editor who wanted to say, hey, that got boring and tedious and it’s a major plot point so that’s not what you want.

I also found quite a few of the characters to be a bit cardboard and stereotypical and there were so very many of them, which made it a bit difficult. Also, Riley, who is a new sergeant, went rogue to solve the case, then they took her gun and badge, and she’s still going to solve it without backup or decent police resources because that’s really a good way to serve the community now isn’t it? Maybe people who tell other people where they’re going because they’re responsible to the public and know what that means could investigate so the case doesn’t get thrown out once all this investigating is done? I know that’s more responsible and less actiony, but officers with dark pasts and chips on their shoulder can still be actiony and responsible and solve mysteries, that never seems to happen in novels. Maybe the trade was big agriculture conspiracy for making sense in reality in this case. Unfortunate.

 

Mortemer is going rogue on this ear of sweet corn, which is not field corn and not under the same strain of conspiracy. Wink.