Customer Reviews

The Marble Mask

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Archer Mayor is steadily turning out first rate mysteries with a strong sense of place. Set in Vermont, Mayor's books capture their setting beautifully with quirky local details. But better still are Mayor's wild (yet plausible) plots. In this, his latest, the police find a frozen body with several missing parts (which broke off when the body was dropped from a plane). They quickly determine that the body belongs to a Canadian gangster, who disappeared fifty years earlier. The plot brings detective Joe Gunther to Sherbrooke, Canada, and involves delving into the history of a suicide-mission World War II commando unit, the product of a joint Canada-U.S. effort. One of Gunther's sidekicks -- the growling misanthrope Willy Kunkle -- brings a lot to these books as a character who evolves from book to book.

Just marvelous.

Former Brattlesboro police chief Joe Gunther knows that finesse and politeness are critical if the newly formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) is to succeed. Joe, being a former town cop, knows that the locals will not appreciate outsiders from the state. As a matter of truth, the VBI has been mired under bureaucratic inertia until the Governor, answering a reporter's question, publicly assigns its first case even if the Stowe police chief has not asked for help.

The body of Canadian Jean Deschamps has been found frozen on the side of Mt. Mansfield. Someone with surgical skills amputated his feet and an arm, and punctured his heart. To Joe, the victim seems more like a frozen fossil since he has been iced for over five decades. As Joe and his crack team investigate the homicide, he also needs to massage the egos of the local law enforcement team, the Canadian liaison, the media, and the public expectations of the VBI's capabilities. At the same time, the threat of gang warfare in Jean's home province of Quebec increases the pressure to expeditiously solve the case.

The eleventh Gunther mystery is a dramatic change in the star's role as he switches from local policing to state law enforcement. The change is smoothly done as Joe's inner values and methodology remain the same, but the type of case and the political implications have moved to a higher level. THE MARBLE MASK is a strong police procedural that will excite fans of the series with its fascinating plot that combines a solid investigation with puissant external interests hampering the inquiry. Taking a risk, Archer Mayor continues to be a leading light of the New England regional mystery.

Harriet Klausner

I've said this before but it's worth repeating: Mayor is a fine writer and I've enjoyed all his books from the first to the latest. If you like police mysteries you'll find he is a craftsman of the first order. If you just like a good story and a well crafted plot, you can't go wrong with Archer. But be advised: The first of his books you read won't be the last!