Carl Houseman

4 primary works

Eleven Days

by Donald Harstad

Published 15 June 1998

Eleven Days is a wry and gripping police thriller. Written by a former deputy sheriff on his vacation, the story covers the solving of a horrific satanic cult murder in farmland Iowa in just – eleven days.

The first Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman knows of the murder case that will take over his life for the next eleven days is when a call comes into his Nation County police department from an unidentified source, believed female, possibly under fifty. No call back number. "Help us," she says, "they’re killing everybody!" Spread over two remote farms amidst the cornfields of Iowa, Carl eventually finds four bodies – one man with his hand chopped off – but no sign of the female caller. Another body is on his back, legs secured to the bed wtih black cord. He’s been castrated and black wax poured into into eyes. His tongue is missing and there’s a substance around his mouth which looks like dried super glue. Female FBI Special Agent Hester Gorse comments: "You don’t suppose they tried to glue his tongue back on, do you?" Along with Hester, a dyslexic investigator called Theo, a sassy radio dispatcher called Sally, his long-suffering schoolteacher wife and numerous Iowa cops who may never have encountered a murder in their lives, Carl somehow manages to collar the perpetrator of these horrific murders in just Eleven Days.

Known Dead

by Donald Harstad

Published 20 July 1999

The second fast paced quirky police procedural thriller by former deputy sheriff Don Harstad, following the success of Eleven Days. This time Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman is on the trail of the leader of a splinter group of US extreme right-wing terrorists causing mayhem in Nation County, Iowa. A routine surveillance of a marijuana patch in a state park in Nation County, Iowa suddenly turns into a shoot-out resulting in one police officer and one old doper dead. As Deputy Sheriff Houseman embarks on a search for the killers, a 911 emergency call comes in from the Stritch farm where shots have been fired and help is needed fast. A hostage situation develops as Stritch and his family are holed up on their farm. When they are finally forced out at gunpoint, two suspects, both armed, have escaped across the cornfields and at the farm a huge weapons cache is discovered. One of the men is known as Gabe and suddenly Carl Houseman, FBI agent Hester Gorse, and all the highly individual characters that made Eleven Days so entertaining, find themselves on the trail of a splinter group of right wing extremists whose training exercise was disturbed by a routine marijuana surveillance.

The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

Published 3 August 2000

What initally looks like a small time midwinter break-in, leads to something much bigger -- a million dollar siege of a floating casino on the frozen Mississippi River. But the temperature is rising and the heat is on Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman...It is 30 below zero in the heartland of Iowa. the Mississippi river is frozen solid and with it, the Colonel Beauregard - a floating casino. Carl Houseman comes upon Fred, a petty crook, one night. A few break-ins have been reported and Fred confesses that he's involved. But now he's worried: he dropped his cousins off to rob the house a few days ago and they never came out ...There are few clues to reveal what happened but Carl realises more than murder is at stake. Soon he and his partner Hester Gorse are fighting for their lives as a million-dollar seige of the casino is threatened.

Code 61

by Donald Harstad

Published 1 January 2003

CODE 61: maintain radio silence. someone may be listening.

Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague’s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman is startled to uncover a group that transforms the dark fantasies of vampire legend into grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another’s blood. As Carl is drawn deeper into this unnerving world, it becomes clear that the dead woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula.

The prime suspect, Dan Peale, is a sinister presence within the group--a man some say drinks blood and never, ever dies. It’s an outlandish, heinous theory, but then suspicions are bolstered by rumors of a card-carrying vampire hunter who is also pursuing Peale. All too soon, Houseman finds himself scrambling to track a vampire--before he kills again.