Gatekeeper

A heroin addict reduced to stealing to support her habit is shot during a robbery. A drug dealer is murdered. Vermont Bureau of Investigation Detective Lester Spinney stakes out a house in which his teenaged son might be smoking marijuana. VBI Agent Joe Gunther is called upon by the governor to help shut down the pipeline of drugs flooding into rural New England, and Sammie Martens, an overeager detective, goes deep undercover in an effort to assist. Christopher Graybill handles each case and each character with quiet urgency. His Joe Gunther is plodding, yet oddly soothing. His performance of Martens is properly schizophrenic as she shifts between her police and undercover personas. Graybill's Vermont, New York, and Hispanic accents add credibility to a lesser, but still engrossing, Joe Gunther novel. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

September 22, 2003
Like The Sniper's Wife (2002), Mayor's 14th Joe Gunther mystery uses third-person narrative to offer multiple points of view, notably that of impetuous detective Sammie Martens, but it may disappoint readers expecting the previous novel's brilliance. When a Rutland drug dealer is found murdered, the governor pressures the Vermont Bureau of Investigation to join various other police and anti-drug agencies in an effort to eliminate drug trafficking in the state. This unwieldy group is one-upped by Martens when she goes undercover as Greta Novak, a hard-charging drug distributor wannabe. She convinces the head of the Holyoke, Mass., network who controls drugs in Vermont that she can organize business-like distribution in Rutland. Her success comes too quickly; by the book's end she discovers she's been tricked by the very people she was deceiving. Mayor emphasizes the pervasiveness of narcotics in Vermont with two subplots: Gunther's long-time lover, Gail Zigman, discovers her niece is a heroin addict who's been robbing convenience stores to support her habit; VBI detective Lester Spinney learns that his hard work and love for his family doesn't prevent his teenage son from experimenting with drugs. With his skill at evoking place and character, Mayor is always fun to read. But with a flat, albeit realistic, ending and repetitious descriptions of the state's law enforcement system, this is not one of his best. (Oct. 29)Forecast:Mayor got a national author tour on The Sniper's Wife, but for this one he's only doing a regional New England tour. The theme of drug trafficking in bucolic Vermont may lure new readers, but this won't be the book to break him out.