The Fields

Erin Young is the author of The Fields, which introduced Riley Fisher. She lives and writes in Brighton, England.

"We all know the trope, or think we do: A 20-something woman is found dead in a cornfield, and the investigating officer recognizes the victim as a childhood friend. But 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. Wisecracking, gimlet-eyed Sergeant Riley Fisher pursues a possible serial killer in an Iowa county caught between the ambitions of Big Agriculture and failing family farms. 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 scene, "shards of amber light sparking off waterways and wetlands, home to deer and turtles, beavers, and snakes." -Oprah Daily

"Chilling." -Glamour (a Best Book of 2022)

"Crime fiction at its best." -Des Moines Register

"Fast, smart and authentic. Riley Fisher is a bold new character on the crime scene, grounding this eerie and engaging thriller. The Fields is one of the best procedurals I've read in a good long while." -Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Heathens

"The Fields is my favorite sort of novel: 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. I hope to see more of Sergeant Riley Fisher, the novel's dynamic female protagonist. This is a classic crime series in the making." -Cristina Alger, New York Times bestselling author of Girls Like Us

"This is superb. Dark, immersive and seriously gripping. Hints of True Detective & The Silence of the Lambs." -Will Dean, author of The Last Thing to Burn

"Young delivers a disturbing, twist-riddled thriller stocked with well-drawn characters." -Publishers Weekly

"What could be more all-American than a small town amid