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. No one knows what to believe or who to trust. Tag Man is running for his life in a way he never imagined possible. No one knows who's watching as they sleep, or who truly did what. Tag Man is critically acclaimed author Archer Mayor at his very finest.
Joe Gunther is sent to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. But as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, what begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case starts to look more and more like a frame job, and he soon 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.
The murder of a small-time drug dealer snowballs into the most complex case ever faced by Joe Gunther and his VBI team.
It is said a bright and clear bomber’s moon is the best asset to finding one’s target. But beware what you wish for: what you can see at night can also see you, often with dire consequences.
Two young women form the heart of this tale. One is an investigative reporter, the other a private investigator. Uneasy allies from completely different walks of life, they work together―around and sometimes against Joe Gunther and his VBI cops―in an attempt 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.
While Gunther and the VBI set about solving the two murders, Sally Kravitz and Rachel Reiling combine their talents and resources to go where the police cannot, from working undercover at Thorndike Academy, to having clandestine meetings with criminals for their insider’s knowledge of Vermont’s unexpectedly illicit underbelly.
But there is a third element at work. A malevolent force, the common link in all this death and chaos, is hard at work sowing mayhem to protect its ancient, vicious, very dark roots.
Lieutenant 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. He quickly 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.
“First rate…Mayor has a way with white-knuckle final scenes, and he does it again in this atmospheric story.”—Los Angeles Times
Joe Gunther and the VBI team are investigating a murder and an arson case—both potentially related to an outbreak of Ebola.
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. Despite Mick’s 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 vandalism—a warehouse fire, a vandalized truck, a massive cooling system destroyed—resulting in loss of life. And either by coincidence or not, Mick Durocher, the self-confessed murderer, was once employed by this very company.
These two puzzling cases—now possibly connected—are further complicated by the sidelining of a key member of VBI, Willy Kunkle, who undergoes surgery at a hospital that appears to be having an 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, turning love into murderous loathing. Indeed, behind the mayhem and murder, Joe must uncover a tragic history before another victim dies.
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. To save those he holds closest to his heart, Gunther soon finds himself opposing criminals more menacing than any he has ever encountered.
When Gail Zigman, town selectwoman and Joe Gunther's companion of many years, is raped, Gunther 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 a trail of evidence. Every lead points 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, Lieutenant 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-what police call "fruits of the poisonous tree."
"Mayor's...smooth, measured prose thoroughly describes both behind-the-scenes and on-the-street aspects of his search. Recommended."-Library Journal
The death of a local millionaire becomes suspicious when Joe Gunther learns that he was not who he claimed.
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.
The body was positioned so that the train would neatly obliterate 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. But 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. A toxic waste dumping scheme, a stabbing, and a whole lot of state politics quickly complicate matters further. If Occam's razor were applied to Gunther's caseload, how many incisions would it make?
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.
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 flats creens, 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, Massachusetts.
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.
“Mayor’s solid twenty-third Joe Gunther novel focuses on a tri-cornered interstate case involving multiple thefts…Fans of this first-rate procedural series will be satisfied.”—Publishers Weekly
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 it 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.
