The price of malice : a Joe Gunther novel

Wayne Castine was found brutally murdered and the murderer remains at large. Castine, a suspected child predator, was killed in Brattleboro where he was involved with a tangled network of an extended family living in a local trailer park. Any member of the clan would have had the opportunity to kill him, and, as he was involved with both the mother and her 12 year old daughter, reason to commit the murder. At the same time, Joe Gunther has learned that his girlfriend Lyn Silva's fisherman father and brother, believed lost at sea off the coast of Maine, might have actually been murdered.Without enough solid information to warrant law enforcement involvement, Lyn returns to Maine to try and investigate Gunther's findings. Gunther periodically puts his on-going murder investigation on hold - irritating his colleagues and angering his bosses - to go and help Lyn in Maine. It appears increasingly possible that her father and brother weren't the good guys that Lyn always believed them to be and that they might have been involved with vicious smugglers who murdered them - and might do the same to Lyn if she keeps pushing.Torn between his conscience and his heart, a murder investigation and a personal search for the truth, Gunther finds that betrayal and loyalty are often a matter of viewpoint.

“THE BEST POLICE-PROCEDURAL SERIES IN AMERICA.”—Chicago Tribune

Joe Gunther’s Vermont Bureau of Investigation team is plenty busy trying to solve the grisly murder of Wayne Castine, a suspected child predator who’s got mob ties in the area. But Gunther has other pressing, more personal business to attend to: the old case of his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s father and brother. Fishermen both, they were once believed to be lost at sea. Until today…

“With its excellent noir touches, terrific plots, and really interesting central character...The Joe Gunther series is one of the best around.”—Globe and Mail (Toronto)

With the Castine investigation in full swing, now is hardly the time for Gunther to go AWOL and join Lyn in Maine. But as more evidence emerges, the less it seems that the Silvas were innocent victims. Turns out they had some involvement with a gang of vicious smugglers—men who will do whatever it takes to keep Lyn and Gunther from finding the truth…and who will kill to keep old secrets buried.

 “Mayor’s skills are equal to the vigor of his imagination, and we take his word for every twist, every turn, every thunderbolt.”

—New Yorker

 

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Archer Mayor s Vermont police procedurals are the best thing going in regional crime writing because every one of his stories emerges from social and economic conditions that determine the criminal activities specific to the area…As robustly written as all his novels, this one opens with the mutilation murder of a suspected pedophile in a rundown neighborhood near downtown Brattleboro and uses the crime to show what happens when a famously tolerant region suffers an economic downturn, becoming overwhelmed by the poor and the needy—and the people who prey on them.

Two mysteries preoccupy Joe Gunther in Mayor's engaging 20th novel to feature the Vermont Bureau of Investigation police detective (after 2008's The Catch). When the body of 32-year-old Wayne Castine, stabbed a bunch of times, and maybe shot and beaten, turns up in an amateur prostitute's apartment in Brattleboro, Vt., Gunther and his team investigate. Evidence suggests Castine, who had a relationship with a colorful trailer park family, was a pedophile or even a psychopath. Meanwhile, new information surfaces about Gunther's girlfriend Lyn Silva's father and brother, who vanished in a boat off the New England coast. Silva's investigation into her family members' disappearance distracts Gunther from the homicide inquiry. While some readers may find the shifts between the two cases jarring, Mayor manages to keep the suspense building and the reader guessing until the end. Series fans will appreciate the local cultural insights and the authentic cop lingo.