The Catch (Joe Gunther Series #19) » (Bargain)

Archer Mayor, in addition to being a novelist, is also a death investigator for Vermont’s Chief Medical Examiner, a deputy for the Windham County Sheriff’s Department, and has served twenty-five years experience as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. The winner of the NEIBA award for Best Fiction, he lives in Newfane, Vermont. Visit him on the Web at www.archermayor.com.

“THE CATCH IS as authentic as it gets.”—The New York Times Book Review

Joe Gunther, a policeman for most of his adult life, gets the call that every cop hates: A fellow officer has been killed in the line of duty. During what appears to have been a routine traffic stop on a dark country Vermont road, a deputy sheriff was shot to death. From what can be seen on the cruiser’s video recorder, the killers appear to be a couple of Boston-based drug runners.

“SUPERIOR…WILL LEAVE FANS FEELING FULLY SATISFIED.”—Publishers Weekly

Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation are brought in to identify the killers—and track them down up and down the northeast shoreline. Meanwhile, Alan Budney, the disaffected son of a Maine lobsterman, is a man with big ambitions—to usurp and replace the state’s primary drug kingpin, a plan that will inevitably place him on a dangerous collision course with Gunther’s investigation…

“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 doesn't do quaint. He might use poetic imagery to describe the austere beauty of New England's rugged mountains and snowbound villages, but as far as their crime content is concerned, his police procedurals are about as authentic as it gets.