Review: "Paradise City: A Joe Gunther Novel" by Archer Mayor

Paradise City: A Joe Gunther Novel is the latest in the series billed as featuring Joe Gunther, but is more and more about his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Their latest case begins at what is left of a multimillion dollar home on Tucker Peak. Thanks to moneyed interests, local politics, and other factors, the local commander of the Vermont State Police wants no part of the case and gladly gives the case to the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. That means Joe Gunther and his eccentric team of Sammie, Willy, and Lester have the case.

A case that also will eventually prove to have links across state lines and result in murder, stolen goods, and more. It gradually becomes clear that the stolen goods are being funneled to a sophisticated and clever fencing operation in Northampton, Massachusetts.  The fencing setup is “Paradise City” for some and deadly for others. The result is a complicated case with a couple of surprises in a read that shifts back and forth in point of view via all the characters--good and bad.

As part of that shifting in point of view, a secondary storyline involves Willy, Sammie, and their new baby Emma. Simplifying greatly, Willy’s world is no longer the button down controlled world with everything in its place that it used to be.  Love, a relationship, and a new baby change things and loner Willy is having a tough time dealing with it. In the hands of a less talented author, this storyline would easily have been very clichéd, but Archer Mayor makes it work and work very well.

Paradise City: A Joe Gunther Novel is a much more positive novel than the last one Tag Man. While Willy and Sammie have their own angst, Joe has moved on a little bit forward past the most recent personal crisis and accompanying depression. These days, while he still has the pain of loss, he is back in the world and life again. Family in terms of friends through work remains a key part of this complicated series and is a theme constantly at work here. So too is a complex mystery that throws in a few twists along the way to make this good read really interesting.

Paradise City: A Joe Gunther Novel

Archer Mayor

http://www.archermayor.com

Minotaur Books (St. Martins Publishing Group)

http://www.monotaurbooks.com

October 2012

ISBN# 978-0-312-68195-1

Hardback (also available as e-book)

320 Pages

$25.99

Material was supplied by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2012

Author of the e-book short story collection Mind Slices available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords in a variety of formats.  Contributor to the Carpathian Shadows, Volume II anthology available in print and e-book.

Review: "Tag Man: A Joe Gunther Novel" by Archer Mayor

Joe Gunther is emotionally adrift in a sea of pain and despair as this latest in the long series opens. He is on leave from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation while he tries to cope with the death of his love, Lyn Silva. It wasn’t the first time being involved with Joe Gunther resulted in pain and/or death. Not only is he feeling the loss keenly, Joe also feels responsible and is questioning the decisions he has made over the years doing the job he does and what those decisions have cost him and those closest to him.

Because he is on leave, his team of Sammie, Willy, and Lester have been left to function as best as they can without his steadying influence. An influence that in the past has saved careers, certainly without question in Willy’s case, and their very lives. Things have seemed calm in the Vermont area with nothing major going on. A minor notable exception being the strange case of the “Tag Man.” 

Local police are handling the case and getting nowhere with no clues, no suspects, and virtually no forensic evidence. This despite the fact that the home invader often eats items from the fridge while the occupants are sleeping. The victim’s first clue in the morning that something happened is the note next to their bedside reading “You’re It” when they wake up. The victims all claim nothing is ever taken and seem to have no links between them.

But, one victim wasn’t about to talk to police about what was taken from him. He has the connections to solve the problem and get back what is his. For the “Tag Man” his relatively harmless game is about to become a very real high stakes game of life and death.

Bouncing back and forth between the points of view of numerous characters, this latest novel in the series is more about everyone else than Joe Gunther.  As such it means this is more of a novel about waiting for Joe to get back in the investigative saddle more than anything else. While it is somewhat interesting to see further developments of other characters, such as how Sammie and especially Willy adjust to being parents of a newborn, it would have been more fitting in a novel billed as “A Joe Gunther Novel” to see more from Joe’s perspective. Less point of view from very minor characters would have been helpful as well as less of an open ending that reads too much as a way to bring the “Tag Man” character back in another novel. A character that ultimately just wasn’t that interesting no matter his compulsive reasons for doing what he does.

All in all this was an average read that borders on the disappointing when one takes into account this strong series as a whole. When you have an incredible franchise as Archer Mayor does in the Joe Gunther character, it seems a waste of everything to waste it on a filler book. Either dive all the way in on the psychology of Joe and his latest trauma and the guilt that entails or skip it all together for a much more interesting case. This book takes neither position and instead finds some sort of unsatisfying middle of the road between the two positions that results in an unsatisfying read. Unfortunately, all too often, Tag Man reads like a padded short story masquerading as a filler novel while we wait for the next big case.

Tag Man: A Joe Gunther Novel

Archer Mayor

http://www.archermayor.com

Minotaur Books

http://www.minotaurbooks.com

October 2011

ISBN# 978-0-312-68194-4

Hardback

304 Pages

$25.99

Material provided by the good folks of the Plano Texas Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2012