Three Can Keep a Secret

August 19, 2013
Hurricane Irene and its devastating aftermath provide the backdrop for Mayor’s enjoyable 24th Joe Gunther novel (after 2012’s Paradise City). During the chaos of the storm, mental patient Carolyn Barber (aka the Governor) goes missing from the Vermont State Hospital. Shortly thereafter, a once-prominent politician is found dead in his retirement home under suspicious circumstances. Special agent Joe Gunther and his stalwart investigators at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation suspect a link between Barber’s disappearance and the politician’s death. Meanwhile, a coffin unearthed by the storm that’s filled with stones instead of a body leads to a double missing-persons case. Joe and his team will stop at nothing to find a resolution to the cases, even if it means uncovering secrets best left in the dark. While the two different cases could be confusing to readers, Mayor handles each adeptly and shrewdly, bringing them to separate and startling conclusions. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency.

September 15, 2013
Sweeping through Joe Gunther's Vermont, Hurricane Irene leaves a lot more damage in her wake than power outages and floods. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. Caspar Luard, the halfwit repeat criminal who's being transported by a pair of cops not much brighter than him, is lucky: He doesn't get drowned when they drive their cruiser into a puddle a little too deep. Carolyn Barber, the Vermont State Hospital patient whom everyone calls "the Governor" in reference to a years-ago, cooked-up publicity stunt that made her governor for a day, might seem even luckier: During the evacuation of her psychiatric ward, she gets separated from her caretakers, enters the warren of tunnels beneath the hospital and is seen no more. Joe's ex-lover Gail Zigman, the state's governor, comes out less lucky: She's caught in a serious political bind after she fields an offer from right-wing activist Harold LeMieur, of Catamount Industrial, to provide direct assistance to families who aren't eligible for FEMA loans or can't wait for them. Unluckiest of all are Carolyn's sister Barbara, Barb's son William Friel, and ex-State Senator Gorden Marshall, all of them found dead under variously suspicious circumstances, in ways that make Joe and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation squad (Paradise City, 2012, etc.) wonder how much longer Carolyn's got before her number comes up too. Nor can Joe forget Herb Rozanski, whose coffin Hurricane Irene reveals has actually been nothing but a box of rocks for 27 years. Wonder what he's been doing in the meantime? A deft mix of storm stories, political shenanigans, small-town procedural stuff and some pretty shocking buried secrets. One of Joe's best.

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October 1, 2013

Disastrous Hurricane Irene has left Vermont reeling, and Joe's VBI team ends up with a hodgepodge batch of cases that might be related. Old crimes collide with new in this consistently excellent series. This is case number 24 (after Paradise City).

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2013
Hurricane Irene caused nearly every river and creek in Vermont to flood, taking lives, doing billions of dollars of damage, and leaving some towns cut off from outside aid for two weeks. But for Joe Gunther and his team of Vermont Bureau of Investigation detectives, Irene brings an unearthed coffin, filled with rocks instead of a cadaver; the suspicious death of a once-powerful state senator, who lived in a fabulously expensive retirement home; and a missing patient from the state's mental hospital. The patient, known as The Governor because she had once been made Governor for a Day in a tone-deaf PR campaign, had been in the hospital for 40 years; Joe learns that she may have been imprisoned there and drugged daily because of something she saw decades ago. Settling in with a new Joe Gunther novel is like catching up with old friends. It's a chance to check on Joe's love life (looking up), Willy Kunkel's socialization (Sammy Martens' love, fatherhood, and even the case of the rock-filled coffin are mellowing the once reliably abrasive Willy). Even Joe's former lover, Governor Gail Zigman, appears, navigating the partisan political minefield created by Irene's destruction. This twenty-fourth entry in a wonderful series is very close to Mayor's best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)