Joe Gunther series by Archer Mayor (#2-#20, #22-#24, #26)
Requirements: Epub reader, 12.26 Mb
Overview: Over the years, Archer Mayor has been photographer, teacher, historian, scholarly editor, feature writer, travel writer, lab technician, political advance man, medical illustrator, newspaper writer, history researcher, publications consultant, constable, and EMT/firefighter. He is also half Argentine, speaks two languages, and has lived in several countries on two continents.
All of which makes makes him restless, curious, unemployable, or all three. Whatever he is, it’s clearly not cured, since he’s currently a novelist, a death investigator for Vermont’s medical examiner, and a police officer.
Archer has been producing the Joe Gunther novels since 1988, some of which have made the “ten best” or “most notable” lists of the Los Angeles and the New York Times. In 2004 Mayor received the New England Booksellers Association book award for fiction.
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Mystery
Borderlines (Joe Gunther #2)
Seconded to the State’s Attorney’s office, Lt. Joe Gunther is in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom investigating a minor embezzling case. It’s a pleasant distraction, and a chance to reconnect with old friends, but when a house fire reveals itself to be arson, compounded by murder, Gunther can’t help but investigate. Suddenly, he finds himself enmeshed in a web of animosity between put-upon townspeople, the state police, angry parents and members of a reclusive sect. Murder follows murder, yet no one seems to be telling Gunther the whole truth—not even his childhood friends—and truth is what he desperately needs if he’s to stop the killings.
Scent of Evil (Joe Gunther #3)
When the body of a fast-living young stockbroker is found in a shallow grave, suspicion first falls on a cuckolded policeman. Lt. Joe Gunther investigates the increasingly bizarre details of the crime, but finds that he’s too far behind events to prevent a second murder. Indeed, whoever is responsible always seems to be a few steps ahead, as if there’s a leak on the force. Sweltering August heat does nothing to calm the increasingly agitated town selectmen, who demand results.
The Skeleton’s Knee (Joe Gunther #4)
A hermit dies in the hospital of a bullet he received twenty years earlier. At his mountaintop home, a skeleton with a bullet hole and a metal knee is found buried in the yard. On the way to the medical examiner’s office, the hearse comes under machine gun fire. A long-hidden crime is obviously very much on someone’s mind-someone who would love to destroy what little evidence remains. The serial number on the metal knee takes Joe Gunther to Chicago, where he is snubbed by the big city cops, and confronted with some ancient and bloody history. When he returns to Vermont with newly discovered evidence, he’s no longer alone. He’s picked up a shadowy presence as eager as himself to unmask the person who buried the skeleton with the knee.
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (Joe Gunther #5)
Gail Zigman, town selectwoman and Joe Gunther’s companion of many years, is raped, and the detective finds himself caught between the media, local politicians, and a network of well-meaning victims’ rights advocates as he tries to put his own feelings aside and follow the trail of evidence.
Every lead seems to point to a single, obvious suspect, but is the evidence too perfect? Risking his friendship with Gail, the respect of his peers, and his own life, Lt. Gunther keeps digging, hoping to find out if the man they have in jail is rightly there, or if the evidence against him is tainted—"fruits of the poisonous tree."
The Dark Root (Joe Gunther #6)
A brutal home invasion shocks Brattleboro’s small Asian community, but no one’s talking. Undeterred, Joe Gunther digs deeper and discovers a cross-border smuggling route carrying drugs, contraband, and illegal aliens into and out of Canada. Operating below the radar for years, competition between underworld rivals is bringing it into the light with deadly consequences. International jurisdiction is a complicated thing, and Gunther will have to collaborate with the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Mounties in the pursuit of justice.
The Ragman’s Memory (Joe Gunther #7)
It begins with an abandoned bird’s nest; a nest made of hair — human hair. Who is the victim? And what was the cause of death? A trail of grisly clues leads Lt. Joe Gunther to discover the identity in question: a teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Then comes a rash of strange mysteries. Sudden disappearance. Unexplained death. Ghastly murder. Searching for the truth takes Joe from Brattleboro’s lowlife to its wealthiest citizens and into a maelstrom of corporate greed, personal betrayal, blackmail, and homicide. But the key to it all lies shuttered in the mind of a shell-shocked World War II vet who lives in the past. Gunther must find a way to unlock the ragman’s memory…before murder strikes again.
Bellows Falls (Joe Gunther #8)
The call was routine enough – someone went ballistic at a substance abuse meeting, wrecking the furniture and causing chaos. Hiding among the onlookers was Jasper Morgan, a low-level hoodlum Lieutenant Joe Gunther has been wanting to talk with. Before he can do so, the boy runs for it, breaking a cop’s nose and stealing his gun. Weeks later, Gunther is called upriver to help out the police chief of hard-luck Bellows Falls. A seemingly minor case of sexual harassment, the case involves a cop who supposedly propositioned the long-suffering wife of charismatic local drug dealer Norm Bouch. But appearances are deceiving. The more Gunther digs, the less innocent the young cop begins to look, and the more it appears Norm Bouch is pulling the strings on a classic – and rapidly criminal – frame-up. Struggling to separate fact from illusion, Gunther discovers Bouch’s connection to the missing Jasper Morgan and stirs up a hornet’s nest of wife abuse, sexual debauchery, teen crime, corruption…and cold-blooded murder.
The Disposable Man (Joe Gunther #9)
When a local quarry yields up a garroted body with bad dental work and toes tattooed in Cyrillic, Joe Gunther figures it for a Russian mafia killing, rare as that might be in Vermont. But it’s so very… tidy. So very… professional. Then the CIA calls, inviting Gunther down to Washington for some friendly “assistance” with his case. Suddenly he‘s caught up a shadowy game of cross and double-cross—manipulated by cynical cold warriors who seem not to have gotten the memo—and Gunther soon realizes that he’s a pawn that both sides are willing to sacrifice.
Occam’s Razor (Joe Gunther #10)
The body was positioned so that the train neatly obliterated its head and hands. Dressed in a homeless man’s clothes with empty pockets, it might easily be passed-off as an unfortunate John Doe. And yet… Joe Gunther has a knack for knowing when things don’t quite add up, and the math in this case is all kinds of wrong. Add a toxic waste dumping scheme, a stabbing, and a whole lot of state politics… if Occam’s razor were applied to Gunther’s caseload, how many incisions would it make?
The Marble Mask (Joe Gunther #11)
There are old cases and there are cold cases, and then there are old, cold cases… Special Agent Joe Gunther, of the newly-formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation, didn’t expect the VBI’s first case to be a fifty year-old murder. Then again, the victim probably didn’t expect to get an icepick in the heart, spend half a century in a chest freezer, and be unceremoniously dumped on a mountain. He was, after all, a man who commanded some respect.
Tucker Peak (Joe Gunther #12)
The tony ski town of Tucker Peak, Vermont is experiencing a rash of condo burglaries. Normally this wouldn’t be a case for Joe Gunther and the newly-formed VBI, but when high-profile people have their high-value possessions stolen, names get dropped and strings get pulled. Turns out it’s just as well they called in Joe, since once they begin investigating the case suddenly develops a body count. Between drug-dealing, burglary, financial shenanigans, ecoterrorism, sabotage and murder, there’s something deathly serious going on behind the resort’s pristine veneer.
The Sniper’s Wife (Joe Gunther #13)
Leaving the relative calm of Vermont, Detective Willy Kunkle must confront his past as he seeks revenge for the death of his ex-wife in the back alleys of New York City. Labeled an accidental overdose, her death is considered routine by the NYPD. But Willy’s investigation points to foul play. Now, his search will uncover more about his own life than even he thought possible—and place him in the gravest danger he has ever known. Will he plummet through the dark shadows of his past, confront his demons . . . and live up to his menacing nickname?
Gatekeeper (Joe Gunther #14)
A known drug dealer is found hanging from a railroad trestle in Rutland, the daughter of a political bigwig is dead of an overdose in the man’s apartment, and a young woman (Gail Zigman’s niece) is shot while trying to rob a convenience store for drug money. Heroin is hitting Vermont in unprecedented quantities. Vermont Bureau of Investigation special agent Joe Gunther (and Zigman’s long time partner) is called upon by the governor to put his agency’s talents to work staunching this flood. Unfortunately for Joe, headstrong colleague Sammie Martens takes the initiative and goes undercover in Holyoke Massachusetts before a more organized operation can be put in place. Does Joe pull her out, or take advantage of this lucky but very risky break? Is Sammie fully prepared for what she’s about to encounter? Meanwhile, Gail Zigman, stunned by her niece’s plight, heads off on her own to discover what led to this tragedy, and Lester Spinney — another of Joe’s co-workers — finds that the scourge of drugs may have hit inside his own family, forcing him to put his job in jeopardy. Taking place in Holyoke and Brattleboro, Springfield, and Rutland, Vermont, Gatekeeper forces Joe Gunther to choose between possibly saving the lives of countless potential victims, and those of the friends he cherishes.
The Surrogate Thief (Joe Gunther #15)
In present-day Vermont, a woman kills her ex-husband with an old, second-hand gun that turns out to have a history with Detective Joe Gunther. Thirty-two years earlier, as Joe and his wife Ellen struggled with her terminal bout of cancer, local store owner Klaus Oberfeldt was robbed and beaten to death by a local thief using that same gun. Overwhelmed by Ellen’s illness, Joe’s personal grief hampered his investigation, and the suspect, Pete Shea, vanished before they could catch him. As Gunther and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation delve into this now suddenly renewed case, they discover that the political opponent of Joe’s longtime girlfriend, Gail Zigman (who is running for state senate) has close financial ties with one of the suspects in the old Oberfeldt investigation. But the deeper he digs, the deeper Joe becomes immersed in his own personal history with Ellen and with Gail, and when the Oberfeldt case takes a turn for the unexpected, Joe realizes that he is faced with a politically perilous situation—and a possibly lethal one personally.
St. Albans Fire (Joe Gunther #16)
Winter is on the wane in Northwestern Vermont. The moon hangs bright and cold in the silvery night sky over hundreds of square miles of a peaceful, dormant landscape of dairy farms. Bobby Cutts—young, heartbroken, and unable to sleep—enters the family barn to tend to the beasts within… and encounters the last nightmare of his life. Suddenly and explosively surrounded by bolts of fire racing in all directions, Bobby and the entire herd perish in a searing, stampeding, Hellish circle of flames.
Called to the scene to investigate, Joe Gunther instantly recognizes arson. But why, and by whom? And for what possible reason? There is little insurance, the family is loving and tightly knit, and there are few neighborhood animosities.
The Second Mouse (Joe Gunther #17)
The Second Mouse takes Joe Gunther and his team off their Brattleboro home turf, forty-two miles west, to chip-on-its-shoulder, blue collar Bennington.
In Wilmington, VT, Gunther encounters the lifeless body of Michelle Fisher. Her corpse, pale and seemingly at peace, offers him no clues about who she was or how she died. There are no signs of violence, no disorder. Snapshots and postcards show a woman who laughed hard and lived harder. Yet diaries reveal a rootless life marred by depression and drink. Suicide seems a reasonable conclusion, but Gunther suspects foul play. The house is for sale, after all, and Michelle was its only tenant, resisting all efforts to have her evicted. The unsavory landlord is a prime suspect, but safely equipped with an impressively air-tight alibi.
Chat (Joe Gunther #18)
News travels fast in the small state of Vermont. In this tight-knit society, police officers and investigators proudly maintain a kinship that transcends the boundaries of their jurisdictions. When an unidentified body is found in the peaceful town of Brattleboro, local police and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation both appear at the scene.
But before investigator Joe Gunther can begin to gather evidence of murder, a family emergency sends him to his hometown, where the lives of his mother and brother have suddenly been threatened. Gunther reaches out to a network of police officers who know him only by name and reputation as he attempts to discover the source of this imminent danger.
The Catch (Joe Gunther #19)
Joe Gunther, a policeman for most of his adult life, gets the call that every cop hates: A fellow officer has been killed in the line of duty. During what appears to have been a routine traffic stop on a dark country Vermont road, a deputy sheriff was shot to death. From what can be seen on the cruiser’s video recorder, the killers appear to be a couple of Boston-based drug runners.
Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation are brought in to identify the killers—and track them down up and down the northeast shoreline. Meanwhile, Alan Budney, the disaffected son of a Maine lobsterman, is a man with big ambitions—to usurp and replace the state’s primary drug kingpin, a plan that will inevitably place him on a dangerous collision course with Gunther’s investigation…
The Price of Malice (Joe Gunther #20)
Joe Gunther’s Vermont Bureau of Investigation team is plenty busy trying to solve the grisly murder of Wayne Castine, a suspected child predator who’s got mob ties in the area. But Gunther has other pressing, more personal business to attend to: the old case of his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s father and brother. Fishermen both, they were once believed to be lost at sea. Until today…
With the Castine investigation in full swing, now is hardly the time for Gunther to go AWOL and join Lyn in Maine. But as more evidence emerges, the less it seems that the Silvas were innocent victims. Turns out they had some involvement with a gang of vicious smugglers—men who will do whatever it takes to keep Lyn and Gunther from finding the truth…and who will kill to keep old secrets buried.
Tag Man (Joe Gunther #22)
Someone is breaking into the homes of the rich, bypassing their high-tech security, their state-of-the-art locks and then making himself at home. The intruder doesn’t seem to steal anything except some food. At each break-in, he leaves the remains of his snack out and a Post-it note stuck next to the bed where the owners are sleeping. One word is written on the note: Tag.
Although the press loves him, problems begin for the elusive Tag Man when he removes some documents from the home of a mobbed-up man. Shortly thereafter, the danger increases when a trip through a beautifully furnished mansion turns up a secret basement room, where the Tag Man discovers a truly horrifying secret. Joe Gunther, struggling to recover from a devastating personal loss, leads his VBI team to untangle the many conflicting pieces of evidence, while the burglar himself struggles for survival in the no-man’s-land between the police and the villains.
Paradise City (Joe Gunther #23)
Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. In addition to flatscreens, computers, and stereos, someone has also been stealing antiques and jewelry.
Meanwhile, in Boston, an elderly woman surprises thieves in her Beacon Hill home and is viciously murdered. The Boston police find that not only is the loot similar to what’s being stolen in Vermont, but it may have the same destination. Word is out that someone powerful is purchasing these particular kinds of items in the “Paradise City” of Northampton, Mass. Gunther, the Boston Police, and the vengeful niece of the murdered old lady convene on Northampton, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the responsible parties—although each is motivated to mete out some very different penalties.
Three Can Keep a Secret (Joe Gunther #24)
Joe Gunther and his team—the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI)—are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and back-up. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd, seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen year old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.
At the same time, an old, retired state politician turns up dead at his high-end nursing home, in circumstances that leave investigators unsure that he wasn’t murdered. And a patient who calls herself The Governor has walked away from a state mental facility during the post-hurricane flood. It turns out that she was indeed once “Governor for a Day,” over forty years ago, but that she might have also been falsely committed and drugged to keep her from revealing something that she saw all those years ago. Amidst the turmoil and the disaster relief, it’s up to Joe Gunther and his team to learn what really happened with the two corpses—one missing—and what secret “The Governor” might have still locked in her brain that links them all.
The Company She Kept (Joe Gunther #26)
During the height of a particularly brutal Vermont winter, one morning a woman’s body is found hanging high above the interstate. The woman, found with the word "dyke" carved on her chest is quickly determined to be the victim of a brutal murder. That alone is enough to bring in Joe Gunther and his VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) team. But when the victim is identified not only as a state senator, bus as an intimate friend of the governor’s, it unleashes a publicity maelstrom that makes the investigation makes a difficult investigation more challenging. While the anti-lesbian message is an obvious feint meant to mislead investigators, it does reveal that the governor is gay, and forces her to publicly acknowledge that fact.
In the meantime, while the publicity rages on to even greater heights, the police begin to focus intensely on the dead senator’s life. One thing they uncover is that she had a fondness for recreational marijuana. In Vermont, however, neither lesbianism nor marijuana use are the stuff of murder. It’s up to Gunther and his team to cut through this particular stack of weed to find out not just who, but why?
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