When a reclusive market gardener's death proves to stem from a 20-year-old bullet wound, Lt. Joe Gunther is presented with a very cold homicide to solve. But who was the victim exactly? A deeply private man eking out an ascetic existence from a hardscrabble mountain field, Abraham Fuller was virtually unknown to his neighbors, in the manner of someone pursuing more than mere solitude. The discovery of a duffle of unmarked bills and a body buried in the garden patch suggests that Fuller had motives beyond misanthropy. Nor is it such a cold case either, as someone seems willing to kill to ensure that old secrets remain buried.
Archer Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, which theChicago Tribunedescribes as the best police procedurals being written in America. He is a past winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fictionthe first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. In 2011, Mayors 22nd Joe Gunther novel, TAG MAN, earned a place onThe New York Timesbestseller list for hardback fiction.
Before turning his hand to fiction, Mayor wrote history books, the most notable of which,Southern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan,concerned the lumber and oil business in Louisiana from the 1870s to the 1970s. This book was published in 1988 and very well received; it was republished as a trade paperback in 2009.
Archer Mayor is a death investigator for Vermonts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a detective for the Windham County Sheriffs Office, the publisher of his own backlist, a travel writer for AAA, and he travels the Northeast giving speeches and conducting workshops. He has 25 years of experience as a volunteer firefighter/EMT. Mayor was brought up in the US, Canada and France and had been employed as a scholarly editor, a researcher for TIME-LIFE Books, a political advance-man, a theater photographer, a newsplÃÂ