I picked up Jeremy Scott’s When the Corn is Waist High because it’s set in Indiana farm country. Honestly? It’s not very complimentary about the people, but it’s witty with a dry humor that I appreciate. It also has two big twists. I anticipated one of them. I never saw the final one coming.

In the early 1980s, Crooked Creek, Indiana is a small farm town of about 2,000 people. The town is shocked when Tina Hillary’s body is found in her home. It was the first murder in the town, and she was an unlikely victim. At eighty-four, the death would have normally been considered a regular death, if someone hadn’t sewn the stem of a white lily into her arm. No one had anything bad to say about her.

The sheriff has reasons to know that. Solomon Lancaster admits he’s an elected politician, not a trained cop, although all three members of Lancaster’s police department had been through the academy. Lancaster has been sheriff for about eight years, but he has two jobs. As Father Solomon Lancaster, he’s been a priest in Jerusalem County for about fifteen years. He’s pastor of the largest church in the community, and independent Catholic Church, and he knows his parishioners, their problems, and their voices. As sheriff, he knows the other people in town as well. But, he knows he’s over his head when it comes to investigating a murder. All of his knowledge comes from “Perry Mason” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

So, Lancaster is not prepared to investigate when a seventteen-year-old is murdered, found with daffodils in place of her hands. Although the county had sent in four officers to help, when the second body is found, the mayor requests the FBI. As victim after victim is discovered, it becomes obvious that even the FBI might not be capable of finding the killer. At one time, there were 200 FBI agents in a town of 2,000. Sheriff Lancaster is sidelined as an observer in his own town.

Lancaster has reasons to keep an eye on the FBI, though. He has secrets of his own, and if he can direct the agents in other directions in their search, he might be able to keep his own secrets buried.

Sheriff Solomon Lancaster is the perfect narrator for the story. HIs wry observations of the community and the FBI circus add humor to a story with grim details of murder.

When the Corn is Waist High is an amusing observation of a bumbled investigation. Then, it’s no longer amusing, and it becomes a twisted story. Keep reading. There’s one more twist in a book that becomes more surprising than expected.

When the Corn is Waist High by Jeremy Scott. Keylight Books, 2022. ISBN 9781684426478 (hardcover), 294p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I reviewed a galley for a journal.