THE WHEAT FIELD Hardcover - 2002

New York City, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2002. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2002. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 281 pages. The author's fourth novel. One of Steve Thayer's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Steve Thayer's "The Wheat Field". Shock waves. "Rocks a 1960's small town when the grisly shotgun murder of two leading citizens sets the town's deputy sheriff against the sheriff and the politically powerful Gunn Club set. Deputy Pliny Pennington has carried a torch for Maggie Butler since their high school days though she scornfully rejected him in favor of boys higher up the social ladder. When she is found in the middle of a wheat field with her face blown off beside her dead husband, Pliney is assigned the case and is promptly targeted by sinister forces intent on framing him for the murders. Shaken by the killings, a state cop admits to joining Maggie and Michael in sex games; Senate candidate Webster Sprague and his wife, Caren, were involved, too. Events get complex when Caren, who seemingly runs away with lots of Webster's money, calls Pliny long distance and feeds him clues that lead to sex film tapes giving leverage over Webster and perhaps revealing the killer in the wheat field. But just as Pliny gets close to a solution, he finds himself set up to take the fall for an even more heinous crime than the double murder, one linked to the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy Presidential race" (Elaine Koster). "Steve Thayer has produced here another tour-de-force of suspenseful and shocking storytelling that puts him in the first rank of today's crime novelists" (Otto Penzler). An absolute "must-have" title for Steve Thayer collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Steve Thayer. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. One of the finest American mystery novelists of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER STEVE THAYER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0399148418.