Bomber's Moon

June 24, 2019
In bestseller Mayor’s intricate 30th Joe Gunther novel (after 2018’s Bury the Lead), Joe and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation look into the stabbing murder of small-time crook Lyall Johnson. The night before Johnson was found dead in his apartment, he had an argument with his “usual comrade in crime,” Brandon Leggatt, but Leggatt claims he left the apartment while Lyall was alive. Meanwhile, reporter Rachel Reilling, the daughter of Joe’s medical examiner lover, gets on the trail of burglar Alex Hale, who’s excited about some information he discovered on a laptop he stole. The stakes rise when this information, which relates to an elite Vermont prep school, leads to Hale’s fatal shooting by a lake where he went for a secret meeting. Mayor skillfully weaves together the various plot strands as they converge on a dramatic confrontation between Joe and a killer. Newcomers may get impatient at times with irrelevant personal details. Fans of this long-running series, however, will enjoy catching up with Joe and the other VBI regulars. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency.

July 15, 2019
Joe Gunther, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, celebrates his 30th outing by handing off detective honors to a pair of women who don't even work for him. Nothing, it seems, could be more routine than the murder of Lyall Johnson, a nothingburger drug dealer apparently stabbed to death by his sometime buddy Brandon Leggatt in the middle of a deal gone bad. Leggatt tells Joe he didn't kill Johnson, but then he would, wouldn't he? Although the police miss out entirely on a second murder when someone dispatches elderly Homer Nelson so expertly that the body has been cremated before anybody thinks to question the verdict of natural death, they're all over the shooting of Alex Robin Hale, a resourceful, ego-driven thief whose body is found in the Connecticut River. But not as all over it as private eye Sally Kravitz, who finds herself drawn to Hale by her father, who's spent years breaking into people's houses not to steal anything but to study their lifestyles, and Rachel Reiling, a photographer-turned-reporter at the Brattleboro Reformer whose one meeting with Hale, who'd offered to collaborate with her on a feature story on the promises and limitations of online security, turned from intriguing to sinister when he was killed shortly afterward. Eventually all these trails lead to Thorndike Academy, a tony prep school whose growing pains, already multiplied by rifts among the board members over wealthy Jonathan Marotti's offer to spring for a new $15 million building, turn out to be only the most visible symptoms of problems that run much deeper. After spinning his wheels while Sally and Rachel dig up the dirt, Joe gets to conduct a climactic interrogation that reveals Thorndike as a cesspool just as noxious as corporate grocer GreenField in Joe's most recent case (Bury the Lead, 2018, etc.). Average for this venerable series, with few surprises but a nice sense of gradually deepening evil.

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Starred review from August 1, 2019
When we first met Joe Gunther (Open Season, 1988), he was a police lieutenant in small-town Brattleboro, Vermont. Twenty-nine books later, still going strong, he is now the statewide field commander of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation and one of the longest-serving and most respected cops in the state. Vermont, known for its activism and raw beauty, has a largely hardscrabble economy, with the scourge of easy drug money always lurking like cancer. The murder of a small-time drug dealer seems to be open and shut at first, but it subsequently explodes into one of Gunther's most complex cases, involving a prestigious prep school and an assortment of engaging characters, including two clever thieves, one aptly named Alex B. Robbin. Thorndike Academy may be protected by wealthy benefactors, but the VBI team, with an assist from young PI Rachel Reiling and budding journalist Sally Kravitz, eventually coaxes the skeletons out of their closets. When Gunther is ready to retire, Kravitz and Reiling could well continue this series on their own. Another crackerjack police procedural from Mayor, this one is rich in chilling scenery and precise technical details. Despite its necessary economies, Vermont takes law enforcement seriously, and fans will appreciate the introduction of FARO (3D Measurement, Imaging & Realization technology) into a mix of technological tools, which, together with Gunther's crime-solving prowess, make for an absorbing read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)