Eleven Days

In a mesmerizing debut, cop-turned-author Donald Harstad uses real-life events to paint a jarring picture of crime in America's heartland—where two-stoplight towns no longer offer refuge from modern-day brutality.

Life in Maitland, Iowa, is usually predictable, even for a cop. But all that changes the day Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman's dispatcher receives the terrifying 911 call. The day cops find the mutilated bodies at a remote farmhouse. The first of eleven days Carl will never forget.

As hotshot investigators fly in from New York, Carl and his fellow cops use old-fashioned detective work to piece together clues. But to turn suspicions into suspects, Carl must search among his closest friends to find a killer who has shocked and bewildered cops who'd thought they'd seen it all. And before it's over, Carl will be forced into an unrelenting spiral of chaos, coming face-to-face with evil he never dreamed could exist in Maitland...or anywhere else.

In a mesmerizing debut, cop-turned-author Donald Harstad uses real-life events to paint a jarring picture of crime in America's heartland—where two-stoplight towns no longer offer refuge from modern-day brutality.

Life in Maitland, Iowa, is usually predictable, even for a cop. But all that changes the day Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman's dispatcher receives the terrifying 911 call. The day cops find the mutilated bodies at a remote farmhouse. The first of eleven days Carl will never forget.

As hotshot investigators fly in from New York, Carl and his fellow cops use old-fashioned detective work to piece together clues. But to turn suspicions into suspects, Carl must search among his closest friends to find a killer who has shocked and bewildered cops who'd thought they'd seen it all. And before it's over, Carl will be forced into an unrelenting spiral of chaos, coming face-to-face with evil he never dreamed could exist in Maitland...or anywhere else.

Publishers Weekly

The first half of Harstad's good-natured debut may read like Fargo meets Dragnet, but this police procedural turns downright explosive once deputy sheriff Carl Houseman gets to the heart of the strange murders that are tearing apart his small Iowa farming town. The action begins when a 911 call leads Houseman to the site of a ritual murder with multiple victims and no witnesses left in sight; further evidence reveals that an infant may have been sacrificed and that other victims will follow. The first round of police work leads Houseman and his colleagues to the members of a devilish cult, but the serial killer remains at large until Houseman comes to suspect the town pastor and his wife. What follows is an intriguing, suspenseful showdown at a local church. Harstad's deceptively sparse style is full of hard-boiled drollery, even when mundane details threaten to crowd the plot. If the labyrinthine network of Satanic cult members gets a bit too involved, the descriptions of the police work rival Wambaugh's best, and the action scenes maintain a precision that keeps the tension high. After 26 years' police work in northeastern Iowa, Harstad seems poised for a successful second career. (July)

Donald Harstad is a twenty-six-year veteran of the Clayton County Sheriff's Department in northeastern Iowa.  A former deputy sheriff, Harstad lives with his wife, Mary, in Elkader, Iowa.  Eleven Days is his first novel.