Archer Mayor has 22 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is The Sniper's Wife.
The Marble Mask
Summary
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 return appearances here as Joe's teammates - like one-armed Willy, a former wife-beater who's now playing footsie with Sammie Martens, one of Joe's favorite colleagues. When the frozen stiff turns out to have been a big-time Canadian crime boss named Jean Deschamps who disappeared after World War II, Joe and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Surete, and the local cops in Sherbrooke, where Deschamps' son Marcel is involved in a turf war with the Hell's Angels and a rival gang of thugs. Old secrets and intrigues come to light while an intricate plan to frame a dying man for a half-century-old crime forms an interesting puzzle that's not fully revealed until the very end.
©2013 Archer Mayor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Sniper's Wife
Summary
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. But Willy has doubts. Driven by loss and guilt, Willy searches deeper and deeper into his past, to a long-ago Vietnam where he was a merciless loner known as the Sniper. Soon he will answer for his old sins....and live up to his chilling nickname.
©2018 Archer Mayor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Red Herring
Summary
VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. However, apart from a single drop of unexplained blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. In the search for the elusive truth, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect's past, every victim's most intimate details, and examine each piece of evidence down to the smallest detail - an examination which includes a trip to the Brookhaven National Lab and an exploration of cutting edge forensic technology.
©2010 Archer Mayor. All rights reserved. (P)2010 BBC Audio
Open Season
Summary
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 closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Bury the Lead
Summary
Joe Gunther and the VBI team are investigating a murder and an arson case - both potentially related to an outbreak of Ebola. When the body of a young woman is found near a trail at a popular ski mountain, the case falls to Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI). They quickly have a suspect, Mick Durocher, and a confession, but not everyone on the team is convinced. Despite Mick’s ready admission, investigators quickly sense there might be more going on than is immediately apparent. At the same time, a large local business is being targeted with escalating acts of vandalism - a warehouse fire, a vandalized truck, a massive cooling system destroyed - resulting in loss of life. And either by coincidence or not, Mick Durocher, the self-confessed murderer, was once employed by this very company. These two puzzling cases - now possibly connected - are further complicated by the sidelining of a key member of VBI, Willy Kunkle, who undergoes surgery at a hospital that appears to be having an unlikely - and suspiciously timed - outbreak of Ebola. Joe and his team pursue these cases, uncovering motives that might link them, while proving that trust betrayed can be a toxic virus, turning love into murderous loathing. Indeed, behind the mayhem and murder, Joe must uncover a tragic history before another victim dies.
©2018 Archer Mayor (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
St. Albans Fire
Summary
In Northwestern Vermont, young Bobby Cutts enters the family barn and encounters a nightmare. Surrounded by bolts of fire, Bobby and the entire herd perish in a stampeding circle of flames. Called to the scene to investigate, Joe Gunther instantly recognizes arson. But by whom? And why? Gunther quickly discovers that someone is wreaking havoc across the bucolic farmlands surrounding the town of St. Albans. Somewhere in the dense social fabric of the community, in the hearts and souls of Bobby's family, and in the cutthroat farming business underneath the region's placid exterior are the truths his team must ferret out. But what looked like a local case is about to take them from the barns of Vermont to the gritty streets of Newark, New Jersey. Before all is said and done, Joe Gunther will meet one of his deadliest opponents to date...and he will need far more than his skills as a policeman to protect the people closest to his heart.
©2005 AudioGO (P)2015 Blackstone Audiobooks
Tucker Peak
Summary
An overworked sheriff and a string of condo burglaries at a luxurious ski resort have Lieutenant Joe Gunther and the newly minted Vermont Bureau of Investigation digging deep for clues. But it doesn't take long for Joe to find the most likely thief missing and 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 town, populated by bored millionaires and supported by a small legion of resort employees, not all of whom are what they seem.
©2018 Archer Mayor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Trace
Summary
The Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) has been pulled onto three cases at the same time; meanwhile, VBI head Joe Gunther has to take time off to care for his ailing mother. Those cases are now in the hands of the individual investigators. Sammie Martens is assigned a murder case. The victim is a young woman, the roommate of the daughter of medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom. A recent transplant from Albany, New York, Sammie must find out what put a hit man on the trail of this seemingly innocent young woman. Lester Spinney takes over a famous cold case, a double murder where a state trooper and a motorist were killed in an exchange of gunfire. Or so it has seemed for years. When Lester is told that the motorist’s fingerprints were planted on the gun he’s supposed to have fired, it opens the question - who really killed the state trooper? Willy Kunkle’s case starts with a child’s discovery of three teeth on a railroad track, leading eventually to a case of possible sabotage against critical military equipment. In cases that lead the team all over Vermont and nearby, Archer Mayor once again shows why his novels featuring Joe Gunther and the VBI team are among the finest in crime fiction today.
©2017 Archer Mayor (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Three Can Keep a Secret
Summary
Archer Mayor's New York Times best-selling Joe Gunther series returns with a complex case involving two corpses, one escaped mental patient, and a long-held secret that binds them together. "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." (Ben Franklin) Joe Gunther and his team - the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) - are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and backup. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd and seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen-year-old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains. At the same time, an old retired state politician turns up dead at his high-end nursing home, in circumstances that leave investigators unsure that he wasn't murdered. And, a patient who calls herself the Governor has walked away from a state mental facility during the post-hurricane flood. It turns out she was indeed once "Governor for a Day," over forty years ago, and she might have also been falsely committed and drugged to keep her from revealing something she saw all those years ago. Amid the turmoil and the disaster relief, it's up to Joe Gunther and his team to learn what really happened with the two corpses - one missing - and what secret the Governor might have still locked in her brain that links them all.
©2013 Archer Mayor (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Chat
Summary
News travels fast in the small state of Vermont. In this tight-knit society, police officers and investigators proudly maintain a kinship that transcends the boundaries of their jurisdictions. When an unidentified body is found in the peaceful town of Brattleboro, local police and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation both appear at the scene. But before investigator Joe Gunther can begin to gather evidence of murder, a family emergency sends him to his hometown, where the lives of his mother and brother have suddenly been threatened. Gunther reaches out to a network of police officers who know him only by name and reputation as he attempts to discover the source of this imminent danger. Meanwhile, his investigative team chases an elusive murderer who has no apparent ties to the victim. In a state that is more like a neighborhood community, secrets are difficult to keep, and it's sometimes impossible to know who can be trusted. To save those he holds closest to his heart, Gunther soon finds himself opposing criminals more menacing than any he has ever encountered.
©2007, 2019 Archer Mayor (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Company She Kept
Summary
During the height of a particularly brutal Vermont winter, a woman's body is found one morning hanging high above the interstate. The woman, found with the word dyke carved on her chest, is quickly determined to be the victim of a brutal murder. That alone is enough to bring in Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team. But when the victim is identified not only as a state senator but as an intimate friend of the governor's, it unleashes a publicity maelstrom that makes a difficult investigation even more challenging. While the antilesbian message is an obvious feint meant to mislead investigators, it does reveal that the governor is gay and forces her to publicly acknowledge that fact. In the meantime, while the publicity rages on to even greater heights, the police begin to focus intensely on the dead senator's life. One thing they uncover is that she had a fondness for recreational marijuana. In Vermont, however, neither lesbianism nor marijuana use justifies murder. It's up to Gunther and his team to find out not just who but why?
©2015 Archer Mayor (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Paradise City
Summary
Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. Someone, in addition to flatscreens, computers, and stereos, has also been stealing antiques and jewelry. Meanwhile, in Boston, an elderly woman surprises some thieves in her Beacon Hill home and is viciously murdered. The Boston police find that not only is the loot similar to what's being stolen in Vermont, but it may have the same destination. Word is out that someone powerful is purchasing these particular kinds of items in the "Paradise City" of Northampton, Mass.... Gunther, the Boston Police, and the vengeful niece of the murdered old lady convene on Northampton, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the "responsible parties" - although each is motivated to mete out some very different penalties.
©2012 Archor Mayor (P)2012 AudioGO
Presumption of Guilt
Summary
A 40-year-old skeleton is found encased in a concrete slab at a recently decommissioned nuclear energy site. It becomes a case for the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) and its leader, Joe Gunther, since they have the resources and the ability to investigate an old, very cold, missing persons case that has now been reclassified as murder. The victim was Hank Mitchell, and Gunther must chase down old rumors and speculations. Who benefited from his death and the disappearance of his body? And was his death somehow tied to New York City mafia money being laundered through the construction project? But what seems the coldest of cold cases roars back to life when one of the central figures in this mystery is shot to death, right after speaking with Gunther. And when a young police officer - the son of VBI investigator Lester Spinney - is kidnapped, is it meant to be a warning to the VBI team to drop the case? After all these many years, the truth behind the murder still has to the power to kill, and it's up to Gunther and his team to capture the living and finally put the dead to rest.
©2016 Archer Mayor (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Dark Root
Summary
A brutal home invasion shocks Brattleboro's small Asian community, but no one is 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 matter, and in the pursuit of justice, Gunther will have to collaborate with the FBI, the Border Patrol, and the Mounties.
©2013 Archer Mayor (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Price of Malice
Summary
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 ongoing 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.
©2009 Archer Mayor (P)2009 BBC Audio
The Second Mouse
Summary
A legend among Vermont cops, Joe Gunther has solved more local whodunits than a whole squad of detectives. But his latest case takes him and his team off their Brattleboro home turf, 42 miles west, to chip-on-its-shoulder, blue-collar Bennington. On the edge of town, Gunther encounters the lifeless body of Michelle Fisher. Her corpse, pale and seemingly at peace, offers him no clues about who she was or how she died. There are no signs of violence, no disorder. Snapshots and postcards show a woman who laughed hard and lived harder. Yet diaries reveal a rootless life marred by depression and drink. Suicide seems a reasonable conclusion, but Gunther suspects foul play. The house is for sale, after all, and Michelle was its only tenant - one who resisted all efforts to have her evicted. The unsavory landlord is a prime suspect but is safely equipped with an impressively air-tight alibi. To uncover the truth about the fate of this discarded, all-but-forgotten woman, Gunther must follow a confusing trail of half leads and mounting crimes. He draws near to a violent and careless trio of criminals whose leader is hell-bent on making the career move of a lifetime - and willing to step on anyone who might get in his way.
©2006 Archer Mayor (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Surrogate Thief
Summary
Over the years investigator Joe Gunther has battled drug pushers and corporate swindlers, grappled with environmental conspirators, and foiled gangs and home invaders. But while usually successful in his fight for the future of the small town of Brattleboro, Vermont, Gunther hasn't always come out on top. Thirty years earlier, store owner Klaus Oberfeldt 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 with cancer in the same hospital where Klaus was slipping from life, did something that would plague him for the rest of his career: He let the case go cold, burying it in the past along with his private sorrows. Now serendipitously reopened, the Oberfeldt investigation forces Gunther to revisit ancient history and open old wounds. Torn between righting the past and confronting his demons, the veteran cop faces the most personal and dangerous case of his career. For somewhere on the idyllic Brattleboro streets stalks a long-lost murderer who never quite disappeared - and with Joe's renewed interest, now has good reason to kill again.
©2018 Archer Mayor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Scent of Evil
Summary
When the body of a fast-living young stockbroker is found in a shallow grave, suspicion first falls on a cuckolded policeman. Lieutenant Joe Gunther investigates the increasingly bizarre details of the crime, but he's too far behind events to prevent a second murder. Indeed, whoever is responsible always seems to be a few steps ahead, as if there's a leak in the police force. Sweltering August heat does nothing to calm the increasingly agitated town selectmen, who demand results.
©1992 Archer Mayor (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Gatekeeper
Summary
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 a political bigwig dies of an overdose, Vermont detective Joe Gunther vows to stop the flow of drugs into his beloved state.
©2018 Archer Mayor (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Disposable Man
Summary
When a local quarry yields a garroted body with bad dental work and toes tattooed in Cyrillic, Joe Gunther figures it's a Russian Mafia killing, rare as that might be in Vermont. But it's so very...tidy. So very...professional. Then the CIA calls, inviting Gunther down to Washington for some friendly "assistance" with his case. Suddenly he's caught up in a shadowy game of cross and double-cross - manipulated by cynical, cold warriors who don't seem to have gotten the memo - and Gunther soon realizes that he's a pawn both sides are willing to sacrifice.
©2013 Archer Mayor (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.