Bury the Lead

July 9, 2018
Bestseller Mayor’s solid 29th Joe Gunther novel (after 2017’s Trace) opens with an autopsy conducted by chief medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom, Joe’s trusted associate for decades and, more recently, his lover, on the body of an unidentified young woman found near a resort on Bromley Mountain. Joe and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation soon have a suspect, thanks to security camera footage that caught logger Mick Durocher, who’s also a small-time crook, disposing of the woman’s body. Mick readily confesses that he hit the victim—a woman named Teri Parker he picked up in a bar—with a two-by-four in a drunken quarrel, but his story doesn’t hold up, and finding the real killer isn’t easy. Meanwhile, arson strikes the GreenField Grocers, and further sabotage has fatal results. Beverly’s daughter, Rachel Reiling, newly hired as a photographer for the Battleboro Reformer, does her own, predictably dangerous, investigating into the GreenField case. This enjoyable ensemble effort is sure to please Mayor’s many fans. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency.

July 15, 2018
"We're talking Shakespearean tragedy here," says teammate Sammie Martens, evaluating Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation's latest carnival of crime. Well, yes and no.It begins quietly, with the discovery of a Jane Doe beaten to death and dumped along a mountain trail. And it continues quietly for a while, with the identification of the victim as working girl Teri Parker, the news that she was pregnant, and the confession of Mick Durocher, caught on surveillance cameras driving the four-wheeler that dumped the corpse near the peak of Bromley Mountain, that he killed the girl as well. But Joe and his teammates (Trace, 2017, etc.) aren't satisfied with Mick's confession, which begins with the implausible premise that this sad sack had had an extended relationship with a beautiful young woman and then gets so many details of the crime itself wrong. As they continue to hunt Teri's killer, a plague of new crimes breaks out, many of them acts of sabotage against GreenField, an independent, but still corporate, grocer (think Whole Foods) under the control of founder Robert Beaupré and his dysfunctional family. Somebody dubbed J.R. has declared open season on GreenField's physical plant, including its fleet of delivery trucks. As if those weren't troubles enough, there's a literal plague as well. The improbable appearance of the Ebola virus at Upper Valley Surgical Services, where senior nurse Victoria Garlanda has recently recruited Sue Spinney, the wife of Joe's VBI buddy Lester Spinney, leaves Victoria herself gravely ill even though she never came into direct contact with the afflicted patient. No wonder Joe grouses, "I just keep going in circles on this damned case." Or cases.As so often before, Mayor traverses the Green Mountain State from end to end piling on complications and subplots that fans won't expect to see any more neatly tied together than the collected works of William Shakespeare.

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September 1, 2018
The body of a young woman is found at a Vermont ski resort, and Joe Gunther's Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) soon has a suspect in hand. But there's a problem. The suspect admits to the killing, but his confession is so muddled that no one believes him. Meanwhile, VBI investigator Willy Kunkle, whose arm was rendered useless by a gunshot wound years before, is experiencing severe pain from the damaged limb. He's been taking OxyContin and even stealing painkillers from a suspect's medicine cabinets. Willy is told he needs a 14-hour surgical procedure to relieve the pain. Another disturbing case is on Gunther's plate: an enormous, high-tech food-storage facility is being cleverly sabotaged, and workers are dying. Throughout the book, motives are elusive and a case of Ebola in the hospital where Willy is convalescing simply adds to the complexities. When the motives are finally?and fatally?revealed, they are almost Shakespearean in nature. Bury the Lead is the twenty-ninth Joe Gunther novel, and, as always, the police procedure is precisely detailed, and Mayor's Vermont is affectionately sketched, with Joe and his team abiding and ultimately prevailing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2018

When a young woman is found murdered along a ski trail, Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team get an immediate confession from Mick Durocher, once employed at a local firm experiencing lethal acts of sabotage. Is there a connection? Is his skimpy confession valid? And what about that outbreak of Ebola at the local hospital?

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