Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed―and others set-up―seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.

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.

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.

When a reclusive market gardener's death proves to stem from a 20-year-old bullet wound, Lt. Joe Gunther is presented with a very cold homicide to solve. But who was the victim exactly? A deeply private man eking out an ascetic existence from a hardscrabble mountain field, Abraham Fuller was virtually unknown to his neighbors, in the manner of someone pursuing more than mere solitude. The discovery of a duffle of unmarked bills and a body buried in the garden patch suggests that Fuller had motives beyond misanthropy. Nor is it such a cold case either, as someone seems willing to kill to ensure that old secrets remain buried.

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."

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.

A small girl brings Joe Gunther a bird’s nest―-made partially of human hair. In the search to put a body, and an identity, to the hair’s owner, Joe comes upon an unexplained death, a grisly murder, and a sudden disappearance. All seem to be entangled in a puzzling web of municipal corruption, blackmail, and industrial espionage. A shell-shocked World War II vet nicknamed “The Ragman” may hold the key to it all, if Joe can get him to talk before the murderer strikes again.

Joe Gunther is seconded to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. What begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case comes to look more and more like a frame job as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, and soon he finds himself feeling around the edges of a statewide drug distribution network. As always, Vermont itself is a major character in Mayor's writing, with Bellows Falls standing in for any number of slowly decaying once-proud mill towns.

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.

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?

Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, is the head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with statewide responsibility for major crimes. In The Marble Mask, the VBI's first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. Some of the more interesting minor characters in author Archer Mayor's long-running series about the amiable elder sleuth make return appearances here as Joe's teammates--like one-armed Willy, a former wife-beater who's now playing footsie with Sammie Martens, one of Joe's favorite colleagues. When the frozen stiff turns out to be a (formerly) big-time Canadian crime boss named Jean Deschamps, who disappeared after World War II, Joe and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Sûreté, and the local cops in Sherbrooke, where Deschamps's son Marcel is involved in a turf war with the Hell's Angels and a rival gang of thugs. Old secrets and intrigues come to light while an intricate plan to frame a dying man for a crime half a century old forms an interesting puzzle that's not fully revealed until the last couple of pages.

An overworked sheriff and a string of condo burglaries at a luxurious ski resort have Lt. Joe Gunther and the newly-minted Vermont Bureau of Investigation digging deep for clues. But it doesnt take long for Joe to find the most likely thief missingand his girlfriend dead. As the complications mount, from drug dealing to environmental terrorism to attempted murder, Joe and his team go undercover to infiltrate the closed society of a one-company town, populated by bored millionaires and supported by a small legion of resort employees, not all of whom are what they seem.

The harrowing call comes from the NYPD. Willy's ex-wife, Mary, has been found dead in her Lower East Side apartment and Willy is asked to identify the body. Torn from his beloved Vermont, Willy returns to the city of his hard-drinking youth with misgivings that deepen when he sees Mary's sad corpse on a gurney. Because of a fresh puncture mark in her arm, the police think she overdosed. Yet Willy has doubts. Driven by loss and guilt, he searches deeper and deeper into his past, to a long-ago Vietnam where he was a merciless loner known as the Sniper. Soon Willy will answer for his old sins…and live up to his chilling nickname.

Vermont detective Joe Gunther vows to stop the flow of drugs into his beloved state when in the course of a week a young heroin addict is gunned down while trying to rob a convenience store, a narcotics dealer is found hanging from a bridge, and the granddaughter of political bigwigs dies of an overdose.

- Archer Mayor's most recent book, Gatekeeper (Mysterious Press, 10/03, 0-89296-766-8), is poised to continue the author's run as one of New England's most beloved authors. It will be published concurrently in Warner mass market in 10/04. - Mayor's The Sniper's Wife (Mysterious Press, 2002) was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year--a first in his storied career--and has over 47,000 copies in combined print. Tucker Peak (Mysterious Press, 2001) has over 41,000 copies in combined print. - Sales of the entire Joe Gunther series continue to grow with the publication of each new hardcover, and Archer Mayor is a tireless promoter, visiting bookshops, libraries, high schools, and colleges throughout the Northeast.

With Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team spread thin on assignment everywhere, from the remote dairy county of Northwest Vermont to the slums of Newark, NJ, they're pushed to their absolute limit when a string of serial arsons across the Green Mountain State evolve into the most shocking series of murders the bucolic region has ever known.

Intriguing plots, complex characters, and a landscape come to life are mainstays of Archer Mayor's New England thrillers. With a gift for vivid writing, he has made "an honorable art form of the regional mystery," according to the New York Times Book Review. Now in a suspenseful new novel, Mayor's popular sleuth Joe Gunther faces one of the most baffling cases of his career.

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. Meanwhile, his investigative team chases an elusive murderer who has no apparent ties to the victim. In a state that is more like a neighborhood community, secrets are difficult to keep, and it's sometimes impossible to know who can be trusted. Gunther soon finds himself opposing criminals more menacing than any he has ever encountered in order to save those he holds closest to his heart.

Joe Gunther gets the call that every law enforcement person hates and every friend and family member of a policeman fears–-a cop has been murdered in the line of duty. Deputy Sheriff Brian Sleuter has been shot to death during a routine traffic stop on a dark country road. From what can been seen on the cruiser’s tape recorder of the killers, it is believed that they are a couple of Boston-based drug runners who were stopped by the deputy on their way from Canada down to Boston.

That brings Gunther and his major crimes team into the investigation―-and eventually to Alan Budney, the disaffected son of a Maine lobsterman, now a drug kingpin, who uses the closed, clannish lobster fishing community, and his extended family in particular, to move drugs along the New England coast.

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.

VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. However, apart from a single drop of unexplained blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. The police are faced with more questions than answers including what do the mysterious deposits of blood mean, coming as they do from three additional unknown people. In their search for the elusive truth, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect's past, every victim's most intimate details, and examine each piece of evidence down to the smallest detail―an examination which includes a trip to the Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island and an exploration of cutting edge forensic technology.

Across Brattleboro, Vermont, rich people (some with dark secrets) are waking up in their high security, alarm-equipped homes to find a Post-it note stuck to their bedside tables reading, "You're it." There is little sign of disturbance anywhere, nothing stolen (that anyone admits,) and only a bit of expensive food eaten as a signature. The Press loves the story and dubs the burglar the Tag Man.But who is he? And what's he actually doing? In fact, he's quickly running for his life, for what he discovers in one of these houses appears to be proof of a heinous string of murders. But is it? 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. With no one knowing what to believe, or who to trust, with Tag Man running for his life in a way he never imagined possible, as no one knows who's watching as they sleep, or who truly did what, the Tag Man is critically acclaimed author Archer Mayor at his very finest.

Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. Someone, in addition to flatscreens, computers, and stereos, has also been stealing antiques and jewelry.Meanwhile, in Boston, an elderly woman surprises some 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 granddaughter 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.

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.

Ben Kendall was a troubled man. Coming back from Vietnam with scarsthat no one else could see, he hid away from the world, lling his house with anever-increasing amount of stu . Finally, the piles collapsed and he was founddead, crushed beneath his own belongings. Ben's cousin, also the medical examiner,is unsettled by the circumstances of his death, and alerts Joe Guntherand his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team. What appears to be the accidentaldeath of a hoarder may be something much more -- and much deadlier.Ben, it seems, brought back combat photos and negatives from Vietnam,that someone wants to desperately keep from the public eye. And a two-manhit team is searching for some of the missing negatives. With Joe Gunther andhis squad trailing behind the grisly research results of the hit team, Gunther haslittle time to nd and protect the next person on their list before she ends up inthe same state as those before her.

During the height of a harsh Vermont winter, the body of a woman is found hanging from the steel-mesh retaining net lining the cliffs along the interstate. She was brutally murdered, with the word "dyke" carved into her chest. She was also a state senator and best friend and ally of the current governor, Gail Zigman. At Zigman's personal request, Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team agree to help the Vermont State Police in their investigation before the victim's high profile and powerful friends create the inevitable publicity maelstrom.Raffner was indeed a lesbian, and the word carved into her chest might be evidence of a hate crime, or it might be a feint designed to confuse and mislead investigators. But the question remains-what was she involved with, who wanted her dead, and what company was she keeping? What Gunther and his team discover during their initial investigation isn't the stuff of a simple murder. Someone killed a prominent figure and fabricated an elaborate scene for a purpose.And this might only be the beginning…in Archer Mayor's The Company She Kept.

A forty-year-old skeleton is found encased in a concrete slab at a recently decommissioned nuclear energy site. It becomes a case for the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) and its leader, Joe Gunther, since they have the resources and the ability to investigate an old, very cold, missing persons case that has now been reclassified as murder. The victim was Hank Mitchell, and Gunther must chase down old rumors and speculations―who benefited from his death and the disappearance of his body? And was his death somehow tied to New York City mafia money being laundered through the construction project?But what seems the coldest of cold cases roars back to life when one of the central figures in this mystery is shot to death, right after speaking with Gunther. And when a young police officer―the son of VBI investigator Lester Spinney―is kidnapped, is that meant to be a warning to the VBI team to drop the case?After all these many years, the truth behind the murder still has to the power to kill, and it’s up to Gunther and his team to capture the living and finally put the dead to rest.Presumption of Guilt is the twenty-seventh riveting mystery in Archer Mayor's Joe Gunther series.

The Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) has been pulled onto three cases at the same time; meanwhile, VBI head Joe Gunther has to take time off to care for his ailing mother. Those cases are now in the hands of the individual investigators. Sammie Martens is assigned a murder case. The victim is a young woman, the roommate of the daughter of Medical Examiner Beverly Hillstrom, and a recent transplant from Albany, New York. Sammie must find out what put a hit man on the trail of this seemingly innocent young woman. Lester Spinney takes over a famous cold case, a double murder where a state trooper and a motorist were killed in an exchange of gunfire. Or so it has seemed for years. When Lester is told that the motorist's fingerprints were planted on the gun he's supposed to have fired, it opens the question--who really killed the state trooper? Willy Kunkle's case starts with a child's discovery of three teeth on a railroad track, leading eventually to a case of possible sabotage against critical military equipment. In cases that lead the team all over Vermont and nearby, Archer Mayor once again shows why his novels featuring Joe Gunther and the VBI team are among the finest crime fiction today.

Joe Gunther and the VBI team are investigating a murder and an arson case-both potentially related to a small but lethal outbreak of Ebola at a local hospital. When the body of a young woman is found near a trail at a popular ski mountain, the case falls to Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI). They quickly have a suspect, Mick Durocher, and a confession, but not everyone on the team is convinced of Mick's truthfulness. Despite his ready admission, investigators quickly sense there might be more going on than is immediately apparent. At the same time, a large local business is being targeted with escalating acts of violence-a warehouse fire, a booby rigged truck, an industrial gas leak murderously unleashed. The odd and common denominator? Mick Durocher, the self-confessed murderer, was once employed by the same company. These two puzzling cases-only tenuously connected-are further complicated by the sidelining of a key member of VBI. Willy Kunkle is undergoing surgery at the same hospital saddled with the unlikely-and suspiciously timed-outbreak of Ebola. Joe and his team pursue these cases, uncovering motives that might link them, while proving that trust betrayed can be a toxic virus, transforming love into savage loathing. Indeed, behind the mayhem and murder, Joe must uncover a tragic family history before another victim dies.

A bright and clear bomber's moon is ideal for finding one's target. But beware: What you can see at night can also see you. Often with dire consequences.

Two young women. One, Rachel Reiling, an investigative reporter, the other, Sally Kravitz, a private investigator. Uneasy allies from very different walks of life, they work as a team to connect the murders of a small town drug dealer, a smart, engaging, fatally flawed thief, and the tangled, political, increasingly dark goings on at a prestigious prep school.

Joe Gunther and his team of investigators at the VBI - the Vermont Bureau of Investigation - are officially assigned to the two homicides. While they set about solving them, Sally Kravitz and Rachel Reiling - sometime working with the police, sometimes against - pool their talents and take advantage of their civilian status to go where the police cannot, from working undercover at Thorndike Academy, to having clandestine meetings with criminals well acquainted with Vermont's unexpectedly illicit underbelly.

And there is a third, much darker element at work. The common thread linking all this death and chaos is hard at work sowing mayhem to protect its vicious roots.

John Rust is arrested for drunk driving by a Vermont state trooper. Looking to find mitigating circumstances, John’s lawyer hires private eye Sally Kravitz to look into the recent death of John’s younger brother, purportedly from a childhood brain injury years earlier. But what was the nature of that injury, and might its mechanism point more to murder than to natural causes? That debate brings in Joe Gunther and his team.Gunther’s efforts quickly uncover an ancient tale of avarice, betrayal, and vengeance that swirled around the Rust boys growing up. Their parents and the people they consorted with―forgotten, relentless, but now jolted to action by this simple set of circumstances―emerge with a destructive passion. All while the presumably innocent John Rust mysteriously vanishes with no explanation.

A year ago, local philanthropist and millionaire Nathan Lyon died a natural death in his sprawling mansion, a 150,000 square foot converted mill, surrounded by his loving, attentive family. Or so it seemed at the time. Now Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team has discovered that almost nothing about that story was true. Nathan Lyon was actually Nick Bianchi from Providence, Rhode Island. His money came from Mafia-tainted sources. And his family now seems to be dying themselves and their deaths are now revealed to be murders.As Gunther’s team desperately works to uncover what is going on at The Mill, who is responsible and what they are trying to accomplish, Joe himself travels to Rhode Island to look into the original source of the money. While the police are doing their jobs, private investigator Sally Kravitz teams up with reporter Rachel Reiling to expose the truth behind this tangled and expanding web of duplicity, greed, and obsession. Having betrayed many, it’s no surprise that Nathan Lyon was a marked man. But now Gunther has to figure out who, among the many, killed him, and stop them before their killing spree claims another.

A high-end stolen car is discovered in Vermont. A car filled with stolen items from a far-flung two state burglary spree. But it's what is in the trunk that brings Joe Gunther and his team from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. In the trunk is the body of burglar in question - one Don Kalfus. Complicating matters, while the body was found in Vermont, it appears he was probably killed in the next state over, New Hampshire.The task force charged with finding out why Kalfus is murdered soon faces another problem. Within the pile of stolen cell phones found in the car is evidence of a notorious unsolved child abduction case from years earlier.Now the seemingly simple case has become more complicated and deadly, leading Gunther's team to be pulled from the New Hampshire coast to near the Canadian border as they attempt to find and capture the psychopath responsible for a tangled, historical web of misery, betrayal, and loss.