Cold Quiet Country

On his last day in power, with a blizzard threatening eighteen 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 that 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. Miles away, holed up in an empty farmhouse, Gale is alone and close to death after falling through lake ice. Innocent but unlikely to ever stand trial in this corrupt town, he loads his gun and prepares to defend himself against the dead man's sons and the sheriff's department. Set in rural Wyoming in the 1970s 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 no longer be able to look upon rolling hills, pastoral fields, and picturesque barns without a sense of foreboding. "Lindemuth's impressive debut...is a go-for-the-jugular country noir....Lindemuth carefully weaves characters' backstories into this thrilling narrative, and his visceral prose and unsparing tone are wonderfully reminiscent of such modern rural noir masters as Tom Franklin and Donald Ray Pollock." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Starred Review