This series seems to be a reliable source of believable and engaging police procedurals that highlight the rural environment of Vermont. Among the four I’ve read out of 25 in the set of tales featuring Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, I sampled the first, last, and a couple in between. Gunther stands out against the crowd of noir detectives with deeply troubled souls and troubles with alcohol and/or violence. I put him mentally with the set of rurally based detectives who try hard to play by the rules but are not quite Boy Scouts. He is not as colorfully comic as Sanford’s Detective Virgil Flowers, as stolidly brave as Craig Johnson’s Sheriff Longmire, or as tormented as Krueger’s PI Cork O’Conner, but he has some off their relentless determination to find justice and casual bravery in the face of danger.This tale starts with Gunther, at this point a lieutenant with the Brattleboro police, helping with the investigative review of a case of sexual harassment by a police officer of the old mill town of Bellows Falls. The woman involved is a teenaged wife of an older man suspected of being a drug dealer. Gunther’s investigations. Joe finds soon himself in tough straits as the criminal elements and the powers-that-be in the town both resist his poking around. He can’t tell if the mayor’s office and police administration are in cahoots with the criminals or are just obsessive about suppressing any scandal that could hurt the town’s reputation and thus its economic outlook. His insights lead him to suspect the drug dealer has a statewide network using young men as local staff, and he gets enough evidence to get himself assigned as leader of a task force out of the Attorney General’s office. There is a modest body count, and Joe ends up making mistakes and getting into some dangerous situations. Luckily, he has a good woman, Gail, to support him through the tough times. Gail is a doctor who works with the medical examiner’s office and is able to draw him out to ease the poison of too much darkness. Here he admits that the case is ganging up with old ghosts:Gail shifted around and slipped her arm across my chest. I could hear the clinical neutrality in her voice as she gently prodded. “Are they saying anything that makes sense?”I laughed to set her at ease. “Yes, doctor, they all agree I’m going nuts.”She didn’t laugh with me. “Are you?”I moved my own arm around to cradle her head, embarrassed by trying to put her off. We’d been through a lot together. She deserved honesty when she asked for it. “No, I’m just piling on the baggage with this one. I don’t know if it’s a critical-mass problem, or just these particular people, but I’m feeling more and more weighted down by what I’m finding.”“Like what?”“Name it: teenage mothers on coke, a young boy in a menage a trois, a cop probably being set up by his addict lover, a guy using kids to run a drug ring. Things’re looking pretty bleak …”“You’ve been wading through the dregs for decades, Joe. Some of it’s got to stick.”…I had to reach back to my youth on a farm halfway up the state, to recall when most of the faces around me were smiling and unfettered by turmoil.I love the sense of place and community in Mayor’s work. His leaning to a bit of sociology fits with his compassion for victims and some of those led astray to crime and corruption. His crime stories owe their realism to his work as a police officer in Vermont, as well as an EMT firefighter and investigator for the state medical examiner. His Goodreads profile notes that his many jobs over the years “makes him restless, curious, unemployable, or all three”.
Another great 'Joe Gunther' Novel by Archer Mayor! 8th in the series. Many of those, from Vermont that have read "Bellows Falls" have objected to Mayor bringing up the mention of Generational abuse of the Welfare System in Vermont. I say Bravo! To have brought to mention a flawed system, in 1996, when to do so was Politically Incorrect, was a brave & daring thing to do. If it motivated even 1 family to break the cycle of systemic abuses, more power to him! This wasn't the best book in the series, yet the issues it touched on showed once again, that Mayor knows his Vermont and shares the good, bad and in between! On to book 9...
What do You think about Bellows Falls (2012)?
It is fiction, but Mayor lives in that area, so he is familiar with it. I love his mysteries; the first one if Fruits of the Poisonous Tree, and that is also very good.
—Mary Ann
An actual surprise. This was a random pick-up at the library, one of those "the library closes in 10 minutes and this looks short enough to read even if bad" choices. By page 20 (after I figured out the names and ongoing situations mid-stream in a series), I was really enjoying an author who wrote well and convincingly about police procedure and had a good story to tell besides.There were some few points that grated, but overall as the pages turned the people grew on me and the world of the book became richer. A good read and I will look for others in the series. In all likelihood the conceit will wear out, but I like it right now.
—Alger
