On his last day in power, with a blizzard threatening 18 inches of snow, Sheriff Bittersmith is called to the scene of a crime. A farmer has been stabbed clean through the neck with a pitchfork. Two sets of tracks lead from the barn, and the dead man's frantic wife exclaims her daughter is missing. Convinced it was Gale G'Wain, the orphan who worked at the farm, Bittersmith follows the vanishing footprints into the storm.
Three miles away, Gale G'Wain is alone and close to dead. He's holed up in an empty farmhouse, half-dressed and nearly dead after falling through lake ice. Innocent, but unlikely to ever stand trial in a town as corrupt as Bittersmith, he loads his gun and prepares to defend himself against the dead man's bloodthirsty sons and the Sheriff's Department.
Set in small town Wyoming in the 70s and unfolding in a single day, Clayton Lindemuth's debut novel, Cold Quiet Country , explores small-town corruption and the lengths some people will go to exact revenge.
With a deft hand and sinister eye, Clayton Lindemuth reminds us that the green, idyllic landscape of Middle America can suddenly become an ominous backdrop for violence and treachery. Suspenseful, intelligent and bold, COLD QUIET COUNTRY brings a new edge to the world of modern noir and readers will not be able to look upon rolling hills, pastoral fields and picturesque barns without a sense of foreboding anytime soon.
Review
Publishers Weekly ( β
Starred Reviewβ
) "Lindemuth's impressive debut...is a go-for-the-jugular country noir.... and his visceral prose and unsparing tone are wonderfully reminiscent of such modern rural noir masters as Tom Franklin and Donald Ray Pollock." --
ForeWord Reviews β
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Clayton Lindemuth's stunning first novel is all about good hunting down evil on a snowbound day, but common notions about good men no longer apply in the moral darkness that is Bittersmith. As Gale waits for his accusers, including Sheriff Bittersmith, to track him down, he reflects on his options: on one hand, "obedience and expeditiousness;" on the other, "standing against a world gone mad." Through Gale, Lindemuth is unsparing in his advocacy of the "honorable fight."