The Price of Malice: A Joe Gunther Novel

“THE BEST POLICE-PROCEDURAL SERIES IN AMERICA.”—Chicago Tribune

Joe Gunther’s Vermont Bureau of Investigation team is plenty busy trying to solve the grisly murder of Wayne Castine, a suspected child predator who’s got mob ties in the area. But Gunther has other pressing, more personal business to attend to: the old case of his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s father and brother. Fishermen both, they were once believed to be lost at sea. Until today…

“With its excellent noir touches, terrific plots, and really interesting central character...The Joe Gunther series is one of the best around.”—Globe and Mail (Toronto)

With the Castine investigation in full swing, now is hardly the time for Gunther to go AWOL and join Lyn in Maine. But as more evidence emerges, the less it seems that the Silvas were innocent victims. Turns out they had some involvement with a gang of vicious smugglers—men who will do whatever it takes to keep Lyn and Gunther from finding the truth…and who will kill to keep old secrets buried.

 “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 s Vermont police procedurals are the best thing going in regional crime writing because every one of his stories emerges from social and economic conditions that determine the criminal activities specific to the area…As robustly written as all his novels, this one opens with the mutilation murder of a suspected pedophile in a rundown neighborhood near downtown Brattleboro and uses the crime to show what happens when a famously tolerant region suffers an economic downturn, becoming overwhelmed by the poor and the needy—and the people who prey on them.