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.Bomber's Moon is Archer Mayor's latest entry in the Joe Gunther series and it may just be his best yet.Two young women form the heart of this tale. One, 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...

The very first short story from Archer Mayor's much-loved Joe Gunther series.Going into the previously unexplored history of VBI Detective Sammie Martens, Archer Mayor reveals the story of how Sammie first met Joe Gunther and Willie Kunkel. Sammie Martens, raised by a single mother in a chaotic household, returns home after leaving the Army only to have her mother's current boyfriend kick her out of the house. When her mother is arrested the next day on a charge of armed robbery, Sammie is convinced her mother's boyfriend set it up and is now up to no good. Warned to stay away by the seemingly uninterested police, Sammie does exactly the opposite and starts her own investigation.Includes 3 free chapters of BOMBER'S MOON, the next book in the Joe Gunther series.

In Archer Mayor's enthralling The Orphan's Guilt, a simple drunk driving arrest snowballs into a homicide investigation, as Joe Gunther and his VBI team peel back layer upon layer of history to learn the long-hidden truth.John Rust is arrested for drunk driving at a routine stop by a Vermont state trooper. Looking to find mitigating circumstances, his lawyer hires a private eye to look into the recent death of the driver's younger brother. The brother died at twenty-eight due to medical issues arising from a childhood brain injury. But then it's revealed that the brain injury was the result of shaken baby syndrome, rendering his death a murder—bringing in Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team. But that murder quickly becomes more than an ancient tale of avarice, betrayal, and murder as the vengeful memories of parties unknown are stirred to the point of violence. As the original subject, John Rust, disappears, Joe Gunther and...

"Archer Mayor's Vermont police procedurals are the best thing going..." —New York Times Book ReviewAcross 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.

Taking some much-needed rest at the Vermont vacation spot of his boyhood,Lieutenant Joe Gunther finds the little town at war when an expanding back-to-nature cult turns violent and Joe learns that some of his oldest friends may be behind it.

To tie into the December release of Archer Mayor's Joe Gunther hardcover Fruits of the Poisonous Tree, here is a reissue of the debut novel that first introduced Joe Gunther in 1989--out of print since 1991. Gunther investigates the murder of a juror by another juror from a three-year-old case.

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...

Joe Gunther and the VBI team are investigating a murder and an arson case—both potentially related to an outbreak of ebola.When the dead body of a young woman is found near a trail at one of Vermont's popular ski mountains, the case falls to Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI). They quickly have a suspect, who confesses, but the whole squad isn't convinced—the evidence is thin at best. At the same time, a local firm is being targeted with acts of sabotage—a warehouse fire, a vandalized truck, a massive cooling system destroyed—resulting in loss of life. Mick Durocher, the same man who confessed to the murder of the young woman, was briefly an employee at the company being targeted.These two puzzling cases—possibly connected—are complicated by the sidelining of one of the key members of VBI, Willy Kunkle, who undergoes surgery at a hospital which appears to be having an outbreak of...

Wayne Castine was found brutally murdered and the murderer remains at large. Castine, a suspected child predator, was killed in Brattleboro where he was involved with a tangled network of an extended family living in a local trailer park. Any member of the clan would have had the opportunity to kill him, and, as he was involved with both the mother and her 12 year old daughter, reason to commit the murder. At the same time, Joe Gunther has learned that his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s fisherman father and brother, believed lost at sea off the coast of Maine, might have actually been murdered. Without enough solid information to warrant law enforce ment involvement, Lyn returns to Maine to try and investigate Gunther’s findings. Gunther periodically puts his on-going murder investigation on hold—irritating his colleagues and angering his bosses —to go and help Lyn in Maine. It appears increasingly possible that her father and brother weren’t the good guys that Lyn always believed them to be and that they might have been involved with vicious smugglers who murdered them—and might do the same to Lyn if she keeps pushing. Torn between his conscience and his heart, a murder invest - igation and a personal search for the truth, Gunther finds that betrayal and loyalty are often a matter of viewpoint.**From Publishers WeeklyTwo mysteries preoccupy Joe Gunther in Mayor's engaging 20th novel to feature the Vermont Bureau of Investigation police detective (after 2008's The Catch). When the body of 32-year-old Wayne Castine, stabbed a bunch of times, and maybe shot and beaten, turns up in an amateur prostitute's apartment in Brattleboro, Vt., Gunther and his team investigate. Evidence suggests Castine, who had a relationship with a colorful trailer park family, was a pedophile or even a psychopath. Meanwhile, new information surfaces about Gunther's girlfriend Lyn Silva's father and brother, who vanished in a boat off the New England coast. Silva's investigation into her family members' disappearance distracts Gunther from the homicide inquiry. While some readers may find the shifts between the two cases jarring, Mayor manages to keep the suspense building and the reader guessing until the end. Series fans will appreciate the local cultural insights and the authentic cop lingo. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review“The Joe Gunther series is one of the best around…With its excellent noir touches, terrific plots, and really interesting central character, it ought to appear at the top of most lists.”—Globe and Mail (Toronto)  “Archer Mayor’s Vermont police procedurals are the best thing going.”—The New York Times Book Review“Mayor still shows why he is one of the most respected American writers or procedurals.”—Library Journal“As always, Mayor delivers rich characters, solid police procedural details, and a rich sense of place. A solid addition to a fine series.”—BooklistThe Catch“The Catch [is] as authentic as it gets.”—The New York Times Book Review**“Superior…will leave fans feeling fully satisfied.”—Publishers Weekly“Mayor’s skills are equal to the vigor of his imagination, and we take his word for every twist, every turn, every thunderbolt.”—New Yorker“Elegant, even lyrical prose...a new Joe Gunther is always good news.”—Booklist  “Suspenseful...Mayor’s New England eye mercilessly details what he sees without the ‘calendar nostalgia’ that usually clings to such villages and backwaters...The clever plot expands like a dark whirlpool and reveals the underbelly of Vermont and Maine.”—Providence Journal-Bulletin“As with all Mayor’s novels, the plot remains fresh and timely. Through his in-depth knowledge of police work, forensics and the medical field, combined with his ability to evoke the Vermont landscape, Mayor deftly brings the reader deep inside the story, taking us along the trail of meticulous detective work needed to bring out the truth.”—Brattleboro Reformer…and for Archer Mayor and his other Joe Gunther novels“Mayor is a devil of a plotter.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review“Superb…Mayor spins out parallel story lines and weaves the strands together with deft precision.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Second Mouse“An intricate, first-rate thriller…a riveting plot and exceptional writing.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Sniper’s Wife “The writing is strong, with sharp social observations throughout…Gunther grows on you from novel to novel.”—Washington Post Book World“Mayor keeps getting better with age…Few writers deliver such well-rounded novels of such consistently high quality.”—Arizona Daily Star“From first to last, [Mayor’s] novels are page-turners, and each page resonates with the author’s authority…His storytelling talents and his sheer craftsmanship combine to make his Joe Gunther books hard to put  down.”—Tampa Tribune“Archer Mayor is one of today’s most reliable—and most underappreciated—crime writers. His low-key police procedurals, which utilize their off-the-beaten-track setting to great advantage, are always entertaining, and his protagonist and iconoclastic supporting cast are unfailingly good company.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

Joe Gunther, a Vermont cop for most of his adult life and now the head of the VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) gets the call that every law enforcement person hates and every friend and family member of a policeman fears -- a cop has been shot and killed. A deputy sheriff was 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 were a couple of Boston-based drug runners who had been stopped by the deputy on their way from Canada down to Boston. Which is what brings Gunther and his team to the investigation - an attempt to shut down the major drug running operation. Specially that of one Alan Budney, disaffected son of a 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.

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.