On the edge of town Joe Gunther encounters the lifeless body of Michelle Fisher. Her corpse offers him no clues about who she was or how she died. Snapshots and postcards show a woman who laughed hard and lived harder, while diaries reveal a rootless life marred by depression and drink. Suicide seems a reasonable conclusion, but Gunther suspects foul play.

Brattleboro is the epitome of scenic Vermont. Quaint in its architecture and plainspoken in its politics, it dominates the state's southeast corner as both an employment hub and an election year powerhouse-all while looking like a genteel, postindustrial New England mill town. And yet there is darkness here, too, and nobody knows it better than Joe Gunther. Over the years he has battled drug pushers and corporate swindlers, grappled with environmental...

"A forty-year-old skeleton is found encased in a concrete slab at a recently decommissioned nuclear energy site. It becomes a case for the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) and its leader, Joe Gunther, since they have the resources and the ability to investigate an old, very cold, missing persons case that has now been reclassified as murder. The victim was Hank Mitchell, and Gunther must chase down old rumors and speculations who benefited from...

"In Archer Mayor's intriguing new Vermont-based mystery, The Orphan's Guilt, a straightforward traffic stop snowballs into a homicide investigation after Joe Gunther and his fellow investigators peel back layer upon layer of history and personal heartbreak to learn a decades-old hidden truth. John Rust is arrested for drunk driving by a Vermont state trooper. Looking to find mitigating circumstances, John's lawyer hires private eye Sally Kravitz to...

The Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) has been pulled onto three cases at the same time; meanwhile, VBI head Joe Gunther has to take time off to care for his ailing mother.
Those cases are now in the hands of the individual investigators. Sammie Martens is assigned a murder case. The victim is a young woman, the roommate of the daughter of Medical Examiner Beverly Hillstrom. A recent transplant from Albany, New York, Sammie must find out

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Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated. However, apart from a single unexplained drop of blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. They are faced with more questions than answers when the mysterious drops of blood turn out to come from three additional unknown people.

"In Archer Mayor's Fall Guy, a body found in the trunk of a stolen car leads Joe Gunther and his team to crucial evidence in an infamous unsolved case from years past. A high-end stolen car is discovered in Vermont. A car filled with stolen items from a far-flung two stage burglary spree. But it's what is in the trunk that brings Joe Gunther and his team from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. In the trunk is the body of burglar in question - one...

"Across Brattleboro, Vermont, rich people (some with dark secrets) are waking up in their high security, alarm-equipped homes to find a Post-it note stuck to their bedside tables reading, "You're it." There is little sign of disturbance anywhere, nothing stolen (that anyone admits,) and only a bit of expensive food eaten as a signature. The Press loves the story and dubs the burglar the Tag Man. But who is he? And what's he actually doing? In fact,...

Joe Gunther, a Vermont cop for most of his adult life and now the head of the VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) gets the call that every law enforcement person hates and every friend and family member of a policeman fears — a cop has been shot and killed. A deputy sheriff was shot to death during a routine traffic stop on a dark country road. From what can been seen on the cruiser's tape recorder of the killers, it is believed that they

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