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Billy Tree #1
Шерифът
ДОБРИТЕ МОМЧЕТА ОТИВАТ ПРИ БОГА, ЛОШИТЕ СИ ХОДЯТ НАВСЯКЪДЕ.
РАЗСТРЕЛ ОТ ЗАСАДА (Из криминалната хроника)
...неизвестният успял да повали трима уши, преди останалите да разберат какво става. Шерифът на Фолс сити отрече възможността убийството да е свързано с наркотици.
ГЛАВНИЯТ ЗАПОДОЗРЯН {Из новините)
...е избягал. В дома му са открити оръжието и гилзите от смъртоносната стрелба. Мотивите за бруталното убийство все още са неизвестни. Щатската полиция засега се въздържа от коментар.
ПОМОЩНИКЪТ (Из служебен доклад)
...бивш и специален агент от Службата за охрана на президента, който се възстановява след раняване във Фолс сити. Не е ясно в качеството на какъв участва в разследването...
РАЗСТРЕЛ ОТ ЗАСАДА (Из криминалната хроника)
...неизвестният успял да повали трима уши, преди останалите да разберат какво става. Шерифът на Фолс сити отрече възможността убийството да е свързано с наркотици.
ГЛАВНИЯТ ЗАПОДОЗРЯН {Из новините)
...е избягал. В дома му са открити оръжието и гилзите от смъртоносната стрелба. Мотивите за бруталното убийство все още са неизвестни. Щатската полиция засега се въздържа от коментар.
ПОМОЩНИКЪТ (Из служебен доклад)
...бивш и специален агент от Службата за охрана на президента, който се възстановява след раняване във Фолс сити. Не е ясно в качеството на какъв участва в разследването...
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
1 person is currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
David Wiltse
50 books32 followersDavid Wiltse was born in 1940 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and currently lives in a small town in Connecticut. He has written plays for stage, screen and television and won a Drama Desk award for most promising playwright for Suggs (first produced at Lincoln Center in 1972). Always popular with Bookhaunts readers, his novels include the John Becker Novels and Billy Tree/Falls City Novels.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 17, 2013
I bought this book over a year ago for my project to read a mystery set in every state. David Wiltse appeared to be (according to www.stopyourekillingme.com) one of only two authors who had used Nebraska as a backdrop for mysteries; I've since learned of a couple of others. Perhaps because the selection was small, I feared the book might not be very good, and kept putting off reading it. But as part of my New Year's Resolutions I pulled it off the shelf and was hooked from the beginning.
Heartland is the story of Billy Tree, a Secret Service agent who resigns (you'll find out why in the first chapter) and returns to his tiny hometown of Falls City, Nebraska. At first it seems that little has changed since he left twenty years earlier. His alcoholic father and saintly mother are dead; he moves in with his sister Kath, whose husband rarely shows up and who seems to be taking on his mother's role as the long-suffering one who keeps the family together. When Billy has spent what she considers enough time brooding in his bedroom, she enlists the sheriff, a longtime family friend, to pull him out by asking for his help. Billy begins to learn that, although some things in Falls City never change, there are other things going on under the surface that he never imagined would touch his hometown. Then, what at first appears to be a Columbine-style school shooting turns out to be something quite different and Billy's investigations lead to a shocking denouement.
Although the plot was sufficiently compelling on its own to make this a decent book, it was the characters (particularly Billy) and setting that really set it apart. Billy has decided that he's a coward -- and yet he keeps putting himself in situations where a kind of bravery is called for, all the while berating himself for his failings. It's fascinating to see his recovery happening during the course of the book.
The Nebraska setting is almost a character in itself. Heartland takes place mostly in summer; having lived in southern Minnesota I've experienced some of the oppressive heat and humidity which is even worse in Nebraska (fewer trees, no lakes, very shallow rivers). Wiltse evokes the weather so vividly that I could feel it here in a Maine winter. His descriptions of the beauty of the land and the ugliness of some of the man-made features are masterful. Falls City is mostly peopled with German and Irish folk, but I still kept thinking of Fitzgerald's "lost Swede towns" as I read the book. It's not just the weather and the landscape that Wiltse gets right; it's the whole small town atmosphere, where everyone knows you and your family and everything you do, and the judgments and expectations follow you relentlessly even when they are completely mistaken. This kind of writing (and it's good writing, too, in an aesthetic sense) is why I started this project -- not just to visit different parts of the country but to inhabit them for a while.
Heartland was not easy to get hold of, but it was worth it. I would urge you to get a copy through a used book place or interlibrary loan, and you will not be disappointed.
Heartland is the story of Billy Tree, a Secret Service agent who resigns (you'll find out why in the first chapter) and returns to his tiny hometown of Falls City, Nebraska. At first it seems that little has changed since he left twenty years earlier. His alcoholic father and saintly mother are dead; he moves in with his sister Kath, whose husband rarely shows up and who seems to be taking on his mother's role as the long-suffering one who keeps the family together. When Billy has spent what she considers enough time brooding in his bedroom, she enlists the sheriff, a longtime family friend, to pull him out by asking for his help. Billy begins to learn that, although some things in Falls City never change, there are other things going on under the surface that he never imagined would touch his hometown. Then, what at first appears to be a Columbine-style school shooting turns out to be something quite different and Billy's investigations lead to a shocking denouement.
Although the plot was sufficiently compelling on its own to make this a decent book, it was the characters (particularly Billy) and setting that really set it apart. Billy has decided that he's a coward -- and yet he keeps putting himself in situations where a kind of bravery is called for, all the while berating himself for his failings. It's fascinating to see his recovery happening during the course of the book.
The Nebraska setting is almost a character in itself. Heartland takes place mostly in summer; having lived in southern Minnesota I've experienced some of the oppressive heat and humidity which is even worse in Nebraska (fewer trees, no lakes, very shallow rivers). Wiltse evokes the weather so vividly that I could feel it here in a Maine winter. His descriptions of the beauty of the land and the ugliness of some of the man-made features are masterful. Falls City is mostly peopled with German and Irish folk, but I still kept thinking of Fitzgerald's "lost Swede towns" as I read the book. It's not just the weather and the landscape that Wiltse gets right; it's the whole small town atmosphere, where everyone knows you and your family and everything you do, and the judgments and expectations follow you relentlessly even when they are completely mistaken. This kind of writing (and it's good writing, too, in an aesthetic sense) is why I started this project -- not just to visit different parts of the country but to inhabit them for a while.
Heartland was not easy to get hold of, but it was worth it. I would urge you to get a copy through a used book place or interlibrary loan, and you will not be disappointed.
January 27, 2013
This book was strongly recommended by a Goodreads friend, and it was every bit as good as she said it was. Wiltse grabs your attention in the first chapter, and he pretty much never lets you relax until all is resolved in the final pages. The book is set in a very authentic-seeming small town in Nebraska, a town which could easily have been in Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, or either of the Dakotas. The characters are three-dimensional and real, including the women (unusual in a macho novel like this). In his quest to solve a multiple murder, the hero has to face a number of very hard guys, all different from one another, in a series of mano-a-mano confrontations that never seem repetitious (even when he faces one twice). When a fight occurs, you feel it: if somebody is hit hard, he doesn't just bounce back. The evocation of small-town life is vivid, and the hero's subtle reasoning and attention to detail is never belabored. A memorable read. I'll be looking for more from this author.
Read
July 30, 2011I live in a fairly large city by Midwestern standards, but grew up in a smaller town. When I’m finished cursing the traffic I often enjoy a good crime novel. Perhaps my small town childhood makes me greatly enjoy books set in places like Paradise, Michigan or Falls City, Nebraska. Heartland by David Wiltse offers elements of different types of writing. It reads like a mystery, and yet the author’s prose is crisp enough to almost resemble the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald or W. Somerset Maugham. The characters in the book seem real, and the small town exists in the minds of many Twin Citians enduring yet another morning rush hour on icy roads.
February 28, 2018
I had really enjoyed the Becker series so was very pleased to find the David Wiltse novel Heartland on my bookshelf. I'm not big into the punching bag scenarios but enjoyed the way the author had Billy Tree protect himself or out think the bad guys to lessen the impact of violence to himself.
(I give the novel a five because it kept me interested but I would have liked Sandy to be alive and have someone in his life to hug him. O well, life isn't like that and I guess gritty novels aren't either.)
(I give the novel a five because it kept me interested but I would have liked Sandy to be alive and have someone in his life to hug him. O well, life isn't like that and I guess gritty novels aren't either.)
June 8, 2020
The characters were okay and the plot was decent. The problem is the end leaves the reader hanging. What happens to some of the bad guys? Do they ever find the missing person? I can't give any book more than three stars if I'm forced to buy the next book to find the answers to questions left about the main plot.
January 14, 2021
This book was the best fiction book I read in 2019. I just wish there were more. :)
September 16, 2011
Billie Tree returns to his home town, Falls City, a ex Secret Service Agent. His partner and him were taken by surprise by a murderer, his partner ended up dead and Billie resigns because of the incident. He suffers from post traumatic stress disorder which surfaces throughout the first half of the book. When a sniper killed two teachers and wounds another, the local sheriff asks Billie to help. His involvement thrusts him back into the small town and a lot of memories. The wounded teacher is from Billie's past. Lots of intricate weaving in the story, drugs, secrets among the people in the town.
July 7, 2016
Good story. It doesn't matter - small town, big town, city - there are always things going on that almost everyone knows about but doesn't talk of. Yeah, life isn't neat and clean. Some twists and turns and unfolding of secrets. David Wiltse did a good job of playing those red herrings. I wasn't sure until the very end.
April 17, 2010
Terrific book. I had read others in this series first. This is the first book that shows what happened to Billy Tree as a Secret Sevice Agent. It follows up with his return to his hometown in Nebraska. The characters are interesting and the violence is unrelenting.
Want to read
February 21, 2011Nebraska
Read
December 15, 2012good
August 20, 2014
A bit of a disappointment after the excellent Becker series, hence the lower rating.
October 12, 2014
An ex-secret service agent with a guilty conscience returns to his hometown to find himself embroiled in trouble.
December 26, 2014
Not a bad story about an ex-secret service agent returning to his small Nebraska hometown and getting involved in a local case.
September 17, 2012
B*O*R*I*N*G! review to follow
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews