Fall Guy

April 1, 2022

When he's not working as a Vermont state medical examiner and an investigator for the sheriff's department, Mayor is turning out mysteries in his New York Times best-selling series starring Vermont Bureau of Investigation agent Joe Gunther. Here, Joe's investigation of a corpse dumped in the trunk of a stolen car gets sticky when it appears that the victim was actually killed in New Hampshire and even stickier when stolen goods found in the car point to a long-ago child abduction case that was never solved. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

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July 15, 2022
A murdered burglar in a stolen car leads Joe Gunther's Vermont Bureau of Investigation team into some truly nasty places. Despite the absence of any identification, the corpse is quickly identified as that of Don Kalfus, and the Mercedes in whose trunk he's been found belongs to Lemuel Shaw, a New Hampshire native who returned home to live the good life after making his bundle in New York. Since a phone found on Kalfus contains images of child pornography and Angie Neal, the girl who answers the door when Joe's task force goes looking for Lisa Rowell, the phone's owner, is clearly the model for one of the images, the leading question immediately becomes who's most invested in producing and consuming this smut. It's not Lisa Rowell, who's nothing but a fictional avatar for Kalfus. Could it be Melissa Monfet, Angie's mother, or Trevor Buttner, her ex-con live-in? Or could it be Lemuel Shaw, whose Mercedes was stolen not from his bucolic estate but from outside the strip club he frequented--a club from which he'd been ejected that night after arguing with bouncer Don Thompson, another pseudonym for Don Kalfus? As Joe and his teammates cross back and forth between Vermont and New Hampshire finding more and more rocks to turn over, canny readers are likely to assume they know where this all is headed. But as a series of brutal revelations stacked up like wartime corpses in the last few chapters indicate, things are much worse than they anticipated. A meticulous, professional procedural whose climax packs a wallop.

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Starred review from July 25, 2022
The discovery of a body in the trunk of a stolen car propels bestseller Archer’s expertly plotted 33rd Joe Gunther novel (after 2021’s Marked Man). Aided by other members of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, Joe soon identifies the victim as a petty thief who’s stolen from targets all over Vermont and New Hampshire. A number of suspicious items found at the crime scene, including discarded cell phones, lead to the arrest of a child pornographer and a link to a child’s unsolved disappearance. Gunther and his team work across state lines as part of a task force, and Archer’s skill at researching and writing about police procedure is on full display as the case grows more complex and disturbing. As always, the author takes an unsparing view of life in northern New England, capturing the region’s beauty and economic disparity, while spinning a heart-pounding tale in which each character, clue, and subplot comes together with purpose. Even this far into the series, the supporting characters surrounding Gunther continue to grow and surprise. New and returning readers alike will be richly rewarded. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency.

August 1, 2022
One late winter day in the encroaching darkness, Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation arrives at a crime scene "to sort through another mess left in humanity's wake." A stolen car from New Hampshire has been found with a dead body in the trunk, along with several phones, including one storing child pornography and an old flip phone that once belonged to Scooter Nelson. Several years ago, Scooter, a preteen, simply vanished, "as if he'd been grabbed by a flying saucer." Joe and his team, "the Four Musketeers of homicide," are relentless in their search for answers--lots of door-knocking and a painstaking re-creation of the convoluted route the dead man took on the way to his murder. They encounter a motley assortment of suspects, each seemingly as untrustworthy and irredeemable than the others. This is the thirty-third entry (after Marked Man, 2021) in this dynamic series, and, as always, it combines a sterling cast with up-to-date investigative technique and technology. Another winner in one of the best American procedural series.

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