Joe Gunther - 01 - Open Season

✍ Scribed by Archer Mayor

• Publisher: Gere Donovan Press;Piatkus
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 208 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0861888502

✦ Synopsis

Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killedand others set-upseemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but its a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.

Open Season is the first of Archer Mayors Joe Gunther novels, a series of gripping police procedurals set in New England, where small-town charm, stoicism and civility sometimes conceal brutal truths.

From Publishers Weekly

Major's fine first novel features Joe Gunther, a police lieutenant in Brattleboro, Vt., who is as likable and sensitive a hero as Robert B. Parker's Spenser, but who possesses a freshly intelligent voice all his own. A wealthy young man seeking his stolen dog is killed by a frightened widow who has been set up expect an intruder; a young woman is assaulted by a ski-masked man with a false tattoo. Gunther connects the victims to their service as jurors on a trial three years before, in which a Vietnam veteran was quickly convicted of murdering a young woman. Pressured not to stir old fires by police and political figures alike, Gunther is determined to pursue the case when an attempt is made on his own life by the man in the ski mask. Doggedly, Gunther persists in his investigations even after the police chief, his best friend, is killed in a car accident that Gunther himself barely survives. Set in the dead of Vermont winter, this atmospheric procedural has some fascinating sections on forensic medicine. Its chilling climax in a snow storm is followed by a satisfying wrap-up in which the true identities of the original murder victim, her murderer and man with the ski mask are revealed and their connections explained. Mysterious Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.