Tucker Peak

The Vermont resort area of Tucker Peak is the setting used by Archer Mayor in this installment of his long running and enjoyable series featuring Joe Gunther. Tucker Peak is typical Vermont. For natives it is a fun place to work and a place to party all night. To outsiders, it seems a little too much on the rustic side and needs work. But the economies of places like Tucker Peak are changing, just like almost everything in life, and the owners think they have a new plan to rev up the resort and cash in. But their plan is being stopped by a group of radical environmentalists that want the resort to remain the way it has been and not create a further strain on the environment.Joe Gunther now heads the newly created Vermont Bureau of Investigation and for once, his personal life is relatively stable. This allows Archer Mayor to focus more on the story and less on character development as Joe Gunther and his team becomes embroiled in theft, murder and corporate politics on the mountain.Initially Joe and his team are called in by the local sheriff, Snuffy Dawson. Sheriff Dawson has his hand full with the daily protests of the environmental group. In addition, there has been a string of home burglaries with the latest involving a VIP by the name of William Manning. Along with his abrasive and condescending personality, Mr. Manning has the clout to get the governor personally involved. Mr. Manning believes that one of the sheriff's deputies who happens to moonlight for a second income as security on the mountain is in on the robbery and he does not want the local Sheriff's department involved in investigating the case. While Sheriff Dawson resents the implication that the deputy can't do the job or that he can't solve the robbery, he is understaffed and needs all the help he can get.Joe agrees and takes Willy Kunkle out to meet Mr. Manning. Before too long, they see what kind of arrogant human being Mr. Manning is and become interested in the case. Soon, the trail will lead to more burglaries and death on the mountain, while the radical environmental group begins to sabotage the resort. The action comes fast and furious rising to a very strong conclusion, as the case breaks open during a blizzard on the mountain.This is a very enjoyable book and Mr. Mayor has brought back all the characters from earlier in the series. Some old events are rehashed and psychological issues are dealt with, so if you have not had the pleasure of reading earlier books in this series, I would suggest you do so, before reading this work. While the action is considerable, there is little psychological development of the characters in this novel. They read like old friends who have been through a lot and while they are working, for once their personal lives are relatively stable. No doubt, emotional turmoil is coming, but after the last several novels, it is very nice to see these characters in a more action oriented environment with less personal strain.

When I first picked this up in the store, it was great to get my hands on it. I was waiting for it for so long to come out and to read it, that I thought that I was going insane. I live in Brattleboro myself, and the places that Mayor tells about are places that I go to all the time. It was much better then "The Marble Mask" which was not as well done because it didn't take place back in Brattleboro. Though, I was happy with the end, and the re-uniting of the characters. I would have liked to see Gunther return to the Brattleboro Police Department or have J.P Tyler and Ron come up to VBI. But this was a great book, and I recomend it to anyone who wants a good piece of reading.

Archer Mayor is like a master artistic puzzle builder. He takes a little bit here, a little bit there, weaves this into that, and what starts out as a seemingly straightforward and relatively innocuous (if crime can be innocuous) crime ends up being a complex labyrinth of events, motives, characters, and decisions that lead inexorably toward the climax and resolution. A mark of a good mystery writer is that the reader is left wondering almost until the last page, but when the answer comes, the reader says, "Of course, it fits perfectly! I should have seen that!" Mayor is one of the best at accomplishing this difficult objective. This skill also lends a sense of reality to his stories that few other mystery writers attain. That is, the complexity of his work shows how much each of us, our lives, our work, our unthinking reactions are intertwined with others - how, for example, in this story, a harmless ad for a watch on E-bay leads to the destruction of human life and paradoxically allows series regulars Kunkle and Sammie discover their need for each other. Tucker Peak is not for mystery readers who want a simple story unfettered by reality solved in 22 minutes (not counting commercials). It is an immensely satisfying read for those who not only want to escape the banality of daily life for a few hours of fiction-more-real-than-real, but who appreciate an intellectual and emotional challenge in the process.

I have been reading the Joe Gunther books ever since I started Ragman's Memory, and have read all of the books in the series. Being from Vermont, I can relate to the location that the books are featured in. I have also had the liberty of meeting Archer Mayor at a signing. Tucker Peak is the latest book in his Joe Gunther series, set at a fictional Ski resort in southern Vermont. There, a series of robberies and crime have occured, bringing Joe and his southern VT VBI team into the picture. They begin with a simple robbery case, and end up with a homoside one, reaveling that there is much more to the book than what meets the eye. Even from the last portion of the book, Mayor gives no indication of who is guilty and who is innocent. Mayor sets the setting, characters and plot beautifully, capturing the image that is just so close to reality that some authors struggle with. Because he is also a Vermonter, he has the chance to research for his books easily. He sets Tucker Peak very well, exposing the 'true' Vermont. Tucker Peak is a fictional ski resort, but it is real enough so that I can invision skiing down it's slopes. The towns, roads, cities and area are all familier to me, and that makes the book so much better.

Though Vermont's TUCKER PEAK is popular in a small way by the ski crowd, the owners of the resort know they must expand or declare bankruptcy. The announced plan quickly runs into an environmental nightmare as protesters arrive to stop any further development of the pristine mountain. At about the same, a series of crippling robberies push the TUCKER PEAK ownership closer to shutting down the ski lodge. However, the state knows the importance of tourist money especially from the ski industry. So when the local law enforcement asks for help, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation sends its best, Joe Gunther, to investigate the felons. Joe quickly determines the identity of the thief, but the individual is missing and his girlfriend murdered. Joe concludes that several of the environmentalists could not care less about hugging a tree let alone a mountaintop as they have something else in mind that could kill the dedicated police officer. TUCKER PEAK is a hard-boiled detective story with the added twist that it occurs on an isolated Vermont mountain. The who-done-it is solved rapidly and easily only to lead to another who-done-it and several why-done-its. Joe feels out of place in this backdrop, as he seems more like an inner city blue collar cop, but that adds layers of personality to the tale as Archer Mayor has done in his previous Gunther novels. This is another winning story in a series in which all the novels are worth reading.Harriet Klausner