The third Joe Gunther novel, this begins with the discovery of a young, upcoming stockbroker murdered in a coldly brutal fashion. Gunther looks into the man’s lifestyle – drugs and a lot of sex – and before you know it, three other people are dead, including a disgraced police officer.This is exciting cops and robbers drama, like its two predecessors – but minus points to Mayor for falling back twice in three books on the preternaturally clever supervillain, capable of manipulating the police and the most elaborate frame-ups. Still, Mayor delivers gritty realism in another way: the characters are fully drawn, with background and motives; the geography and climate of Vermont is palpable (where in the previous books the cold was almost like an extra character, here it’s an unseasonably hot summer); and Mayor delivers lessons on every plot point, from EMT techniques to how poisons work to the ins and outs and validity of various kinds of warrants. It’s a police procedural leavened with romance and harrowing chase scenes.
1992, #3 Lt. Joe Gunther, Brattleboro VT Police Department; police procedural.A dead body in an all-too-easily found grave, a policeman with secrets, money laundering and drug deals gone bad: a nasty situation seems to be escalating for Joe Gunther and his Vermont cops, as they discover more bodies, and bugs and snitches and reporters also show up. Another interesting visit with Joe, as he shows us the darker reaches of his old town, and its less than illustrious folks, while trying to unravel an extremely complicated case of revenge. Very good setting, excellent plotting and twists, (although I did twig to the actual killer a couple of steps ahead of Joe) and not much romance, makes this a tidy and satisfying procedural, as we see the effects of a nasty heatwave and stress work their way through the department.
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I didn't enjoy this mystery as much as the previous ones in the series. Joe Gunther seems more single-minded about work, and while this gives the author a chance to show Gunther's style as a manager and mentor, it slights his relationship with Gail Zigman, which provided a lot of the interest of the first couple of books. Also, I had a sense of "too many cops, too many suspects," including one who was mentioned in passing in an early chapter and became significant hundreds of pages later. Fortunately, he did not turn out to be the killer. That would have spoiled the book for me. But the person who did was almost as much of a cipher...until he was revealed to be the mastermind. Come on, Archer Mayor, you can do better than that.
—Dennis Fischman
