Archer Mayor never seems to run out of ideas for his crime novels.
“Presumption of Guilt” is the 27th police procedural Mayor has written featuring Joe Gunther, head of a squad at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. It is full of freshideas and characters.
The corpse that sets off the story is far from fresh, however. Workers at the decommissioned Vermont Yankee plant just outside of Brattleboro come across a body in a concrete slab in a warehouse there.
Gunther and his family-like squad of detectives quickly realize that the body has been hidden there since 1970 when the plant was constructed. They identify the body fairly quickly. Hank Mitchell was a roofer who supposedly walked out on his wife 40 years earlier.
Gunther and the group talk to a lot of people who knew Mitchell: his family, his former boss, his drinking associates and a woman who loved him unrequitedly.
Everyone claims, mostly believably, to have assumed that Mitchell’s disappearance was voluntary. It takes the squad members a long time to achieve any sort of focus for their investigation. Nevertheless, they feel sure that they are getting closer when one of their suspects is shot to death.
Weaving in and out of the action are a cat burglar and his daughter. The burglar specializes in stealing financial information from his targets’ homes. He shares some of his knowledge with Gunther’s colleague Willy Kunkle, who tends to view the technicalities of the law as flexible.
The first part of the book is taken up by Gunther’s initial queries. In the second part, Mayor introduces new characters to the reader.
Tina Panik is the newly-crowned head of a small group of organized criminals in New York. It quickly becomes apparent that the Vermont Yankee murder has something to do with the activities of Panik’s late father and his associates in the past. The action picks up as the New York and Vermont forces converge in a cat-and-mouse chase.
Mayor’s story is a swift and exciting read. He nicely balances novelty with the ongoing familiarity of Joe Gunther and his squad. This author can write about the sounds of a serene summer night or the claustrophobia of a cabin filled with weapons with equal ease.
And he saves a small surprise for the end of the book when he loops back in the action to identify Hank Mitchell’s killer.
Archer Mayor will read from “Presumption of Guilt” and sign copies of the book on Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley.
Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” Visit her website, www.TinkyCooks.com.