In Steven Tingle’s debut, Graveyard Fields, he takes an inept cop turned equally incompetent private investigator, stomps him into the ground, and turns all of his actions into a tragic comedy. I don’t know when I felt so frustrated with a character, and ended up laughing and rooting for him.

Davis Reed’s life is a mess. He made it through training for the Charleston Police Department, but didn’t last a month before his training officer suggested he become a private investigator. He’s not very good at that since he has anger and anxiety issues that he manages with too much alcohol combined with Xanax. He’s even living in a room of his sister’s house until she suspects her husband is having an affair and asks Davis to follow him. Davis assures her her husband, Greg, is just a cop working long hours. Then, he follows him to a garage containing drugs and guns. Reed ends up attacking his brother-in-law, until someone shoots Davis in the leg. Let’s just say it’s better for Reed to head to the Great Smoky Mountains.

Reed is a lousy PI, but he has aspirations of writing a book about the crash of a B-25 into Cold Mountain. He rents a cabin from Dale Johnson, a local deputy in Cruso, North Carolina, a 275 pound giant who shares Reed’s interest in home-brewed beer and ’80s heavy metal. Reed doesn’t put a word on paper, but he does walk a short distance on a trail in the Pisgah National Forest, hoping for inspiration. All he finds is a ring of keys, but those keys fire up an obsession in him. He wants to know why someone left keys on the trail. When Deputy Johnson and Reed find a BMW in a lot at Graveyard Fields, Davis becomes more obsessed. A key opens the car, but none of the keys open the trunk. It’s a downhill slide for Reed as those keys disappear, reappear, and several people seem to be looking for them. Fueled by beer and Xanax, he can’t let go of his search for answers.

It only gets worse when Dale sends him to his cousin, Floppy Johnson, a mechanic whose mouth never stops flapping. Floppy only adds to Reed’s anxiety as he talks of rumors of gold connected to that plane crash into the mountain. But, Reed Davis is on a collision course of his own. His past in Charleston might just catch up with him, and he’s going to need help from the Johnson cousins to survive.

Ah, Davis. As I said, his life is a tragedy. He really has nothing going for him, and his dream of being a writer is wishful thinking. But, he makes a good home-brewed beer, and he’s found a loyal friend in Deputy Dale Johnson. And, there are scenes in the last third of the book that will leave you laughing. Tingle’s debut, Graveyard Fields, as I said, is part tragedy, part comedy, and sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference. But, it’s different, and fresh, and it’s fun.

Steven Tingle’s website is https://www.steventingle.com/

Graveyard Fields by Steven Tingle. Crooked Lane Books, 2021. ISBN 9781643856865 (hardcover), 288p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .PDF to review for a journal.