Tom Taylorson
1) Borderlines
Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, is the head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with statewide responsibility for major crimes. In The Marble Mask, the VBI's first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. Some of the more interesting minor characters in author Archer Mayor's long-running series about the amiable elder sleuth make
...A small girl brings Joe Gunther a bird's nest—made partially of human hair. In the search to put a body, and an identity, to the hair's owner, Joe comes upon an unexplained death, a grisly murder, and a sudden disappearance. All seem to be entangled in a puzzling web of municipal corruption, blackmail, and industrial espionage. A shell-shocked World War II vet nicknamed "The Ragman" may hold the key to it all, if Joe can get him to talk before
...6) Tucker peak
An overworked sheriff and a string of condo burglaries at a luxurious ski resort have Lt. Joe Gunther and the newly-minted Vermont Bureau of Investigation digging deep for clues. But it doesnt take long for Joe to find the most likely thief missingand his girlfriend dead. As the complications mount, from drug dealing to environmental terrorism to attempted murder, Joe and his team go undercover to infiltrate the closed society of a one-company
...7) Gatekeeper
Vermont detective Joe Gunther vows to stop the flow of drugs into his beloved state when in the course of a week a young heroin addict is gunned down while trying to rob a convenience store, a narcotics dealer is found hanging from a bridge, and the granddaughter of political bigwigs dies of an overdose.
The body was positioned so that the train neatly obliterated its head and hands. Dressed in a homeless man's clothes with empty pockets, it might easily be passed-off as an unfortunate John Doe. And yet... Joe Gunther has a knack for knowing when things don't quite add up, and the math in this case is all kinds of wrong. Add a toxic waste dumping scheme, a stabbing, and a whole lot of state politics... if Occam's razor were applied to Gunther's
...10) The Night Parade
One man's gifted daughter may be the cure to a mysterious illness causing hallucinations and death in this horror novel by the author of Little Girls.
First the birds disappeared.
Then the insects took over.
And the madness began . . .
They call it Wanderer's Folly—a disease of delusions, of daydreams and nightmares. A plague threatening to wipe out humanity.
After two years
...11) Bellows Falls
Joe Gunther is seconded to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. What begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case comes to look more and more like a frame job as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, and soon he finds himself feeling around the edges of a statewide drug distribution network. As always, Vermont itself is a major character in Mayor's writing, with Bellows Falls standing in
...But while usually successful in his fight for the town's future, Gunther hasn't always come out on top... Thirty years earlier store owner Klaus Ober-feldt was robbed and beaten senseless. When Klaus died six months later, a case of assault and battery became first degree murder. The guilty man eventually appeared to be a well-known, small-time crook, but enough time had elapsed for him to vanish. Gunther, distracted by his wife's losing struggle
...Gail Zigman, town selectwoman and Joe Gunther's companion of many years, is raped, and the detective finds himself caught between the media, local politicians, and a network of well-meaning victims' rights advocates as he tries to put his own feelings aside and follow the trail of evidence. Every lead seems to point to a single, obvious suspect, but is the evidence too perfect? Risking his friendship with Gail, the respect of his peers, and his
...The harrowing call comes from the NYPD. Willy's ex-wife, Mary, has been found dead in her Lower East Side apartment and Willy is asked to identify the body. Torn from his beloved Vermont, Willy returns to the city of his hard-drinking youth with misgivings that deepen when he sees Mary's sad corpse on a gurney. Because of a fresh puncture mark in her arm, the police think she overdosed. Yet Willy has doubts. Driven by loss and guilt, he searches
...15) Marked man
16) The Dark Root
A brutal home invasion shocks Brattleboro's small Asian community, but no one's talking. Undeterred, Joe Gunther digs deeper and discovers a cross-border smuggling route carrying drugs, contraband, and illegal aliens into and out of Canada. Operating below the radar for years, competition between underworld rivals is bringing it into the light with deadly consequences. International jurisdiction is a complicated thing, and Gunther will have to
...Caleb Carr, the author of The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, returns with a contemporary, edge-of-your-seat thriller featuring the brilliant but unconventional criminal...
18) The Truth Itself
19) St. Albans fire
With Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team spread thin on assignment everywhere, from the remote dairy county of Northwest Vermont to the slums of Newark, NJ, they're pushed to their absolute limit when a string of serial arsons across the Green Mountain State evolve into the most shocking series of murders the bucolic region has ever known.
20) Open Season
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 killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it's a case that many in the department would prefer remained
...