Archer Mayor

• Born: July 30, 1950
• Place of Birth: Mount Kisco, New York

TYPE OF PLOT: Police procedural

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Joe Gunther, 1988-2022

Contribution

Aside from the intricate but never unduly convoluted plots, the most noticeable quality of Archer Mayor’s Joe Gunther novels is their strong evocation of—and affection for—their setting, Vermont. Mayor’s familiarity with the small New England state is evident throughout the novels. The appearance of the landscape and the character of the towns and their inhabitants are Mayor’s concerns, as are the infrequent crimes he describes and the understaffed law enforcement agencies that solve them. Mayor is very much a regionalist.

Although it is one of his most interesting characteristics, Mayor’s allegiance to Vermont is also one of his greatest challenges. In choosing to set more than a dozen murder mysteries in a small, sparsely populated state that has averaged no more than seven murders a year, Mayor has set himself a difficult task; it is a testimony to his talent that he has kept the novels fresh and the plots credible. Most of his early novels are set in Brattleboro, but later in the series, Mayor broadens his canvas to include all of Vermont. Occasionally, Gunther travels to cities such as Newark or Chicago to solve Vermont-based crimes. Mayor has stated that he likes to work in Vermont because it is a small state where everybody knows everybody else. For some characters in his novels, this ease of access to local and state authorities is a blessing; for others, the lack of anonymity is a curse.

In an interview, Mayor listed several authors whose work he enjoyed. In many cases, their influence on him is evident: Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Maurice Leblanc, Georges Simenon, and Ross Macdonald are some of these authors. Mayor, however, synthesizes these influences and takes them in a different direction, in part with the small-town and rural settings he uses and in part with the very nature of his protagonist. Joe Gunther does not have the flamboyant or strong personality of many protagonists in detective fiction; he is a man of strong character but not overpowering characteristics.

Mayor’s Joe Gunther books have received positive reviews in major newspapers and publications devoted to mystery and detective fiction. He is also a recipient of the New England Book Award for fiction from the New England Booksellers Association.

Biography

Born on July 30, 1950, on a farm in New York, Archer Huntington Mayor traveled widely in his youth and amassed a breadth of experience that has served him well as a writer. Mayor has stated that before age thirty, he never lived in the same locale for more than four years. In 1980, he came to live in Vermont and, in 1982, moved near Brattleboro, the town that would provide the setting for most of the novels in the Joe Gunther series. He later moved to Newfane, Vermont. Mayor has stated that moving from place to place gave him a sociologist’s ability to “read” a place or situation quickly and go about fitting in; this ability surely came in handy when he returned to the United States for college after having been raised largely abroad, and it is an ability his protagonist, Joe Gunther, has in abundance.

Mayor held a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time novelist. He studied history at Yale and is the author of two nonfictional historical works published by an academic press: Southern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan (1988) and Huron Mountain Club: The First Hundred Years (1989). He has stated that in addition to writing history, he worked as a scholarly editor, a political advance man, a theater photographer, a newspaper writer and editor, a lab technician, and a medical illustrator. He also made several attempts at writing novels, which he later dismissed as “typing.”

From this wide range of formative experiences, Mayor gained skills that would serve him well in his career as a novelist; persistence was not the least of these. His training as a historian is evident in the plots of several of his novels that feature the piecing together of cold cases and his meticulous documentation of the people and locales of Vermont. Although he has joked that his work as a writer of political advertisements taught him how to be a good liar, his awareness of and sensitivity to politics is a significant quality in his novels: The ambition and sometimes corruption of elected officials such as state attorneys, town selectmen, and even governors, frequently play important roles in Mayor’s plots. Mayor’s training as a journalist reveals itself in the sympathetic portrayal of Stanley Katz, a hard-nosed but principled newspaper writer and later editor, who is a recurring character in Mayor’s novels. Mayor also has attributed his ability to write to deadlines and to overcome writer’s block to his journalistic training and experience.

Although Mayor has been a full-time novelist for many years, he has also served his community in ways that enhance his fiction. He has worked for many years as a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician for the Newbrook Fire Department in his home of Newfane. He has worked in Vermont law enforcement as a town constable and as a part-time patrol officer for Bellows Falls, close to the New Hampshire border. He is also an assistant medical examiner for the state of Vermont, where his job is to investigate and document all unattended deaths. In 2024, Mayor continued his work as a death investigator for Vermont's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a role he has held for twenty-one years. He has stated that he becomes a mini-biographer of the deceased, in addition to helping the survivors begin the grieving process. Mayor participates in writers’ conferences and workshops around the Northeast. In the mid-2020s, following the release of his thirty-third book in the Joe Gunther series, Fall Guy (2022), Mayor announced he was taking a break from writing. 

Analysis

Like many other series, Archer Mayor’s Joe Gunther novels are loosely connected but ultimately discrete, stand-alone episodes in the protagonist's life. The books can be read out of order or individually without detriment to understanding or enjoyment. However, readers who approach the novels sequentially will enjoy following the stories of several supporting characters. Although Gunther is the protagonist of most of the novels, he seems to change relatively little. This is not surprising as most of the novels are told from his point of view, whether narrated in the first person, as are the earlier novels, or in the third person, as they are from The Sniper’s Wife (2002) forward. Gunther directs his attention outward, not inward.

Although Gunther is at the center of the series, and his backstory is painted in considerable detail, he is not described physically. This was a conscious decision on Mayor’s part; he has left the physical details of his protagonist vague so that the reader becomes a participant in the creation of the character. In Scent of Evil (1992), it is revealed that he hails from Thetford Hill, a town on the eastern side of Vermont, and was not a particularly ambitious young man. A voracious reader, he is content to stay around the farm, though his brother Leo eventually stays home to care for their aging mother. Like Mayor himself, Gunther becomes something of a nomad early in life. After fighting in the Korean War and attending college in California, he returned to Vermont, where he married Ellen, who has died of cancer by the time the novels begin.

In the earlier novels, the cast of supporting characters remains fairly constant when Gunther is the lieutenant in charge of the Brattleboro detective squad. They include Tony Brandt, the chief of police, who is supportive of Gunther and adept at negotiating the often troubled political waters of Brattleboro and soothing the friction between the state’s attorney and the police officers on the street. Willy Kunkle, an antihero who is the protagonist of The Sniper’s Wife (2002), is the darkest recurring character in the series. Yet, he is Gunther’s most trusted sidekick when it comes to action. J. P. Tyler is an intellectual detective trained in forensics; he is the fastidious custodian of the crime scene, and he is happiest in his makeshift lab, examining the garbage or personal effects of suspects and victims. Ron Klesczewski is the department's youngest and most idealistic member; he is serious and detail-oriented, with a head for paperwork and computers. Although he is insecure, Gunther supports and grooms him. After the creation of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation removes Gunther from the Brattleboro force, Klesczewski takes over the detective squad. Sammie Martens, the only female detective in a squad of men, is similarly enthusiastic and often comes close to overcompensating. Her youthful athleticism occasionally shows the negative effects of Gunther’s sedentary middle-aged lifestyle in crises, as in, for instance, Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (1994).

The most significant interpersonal relationship in the Joe Gunther novels, however, is not between police officers but between Gunther and his longtime lover, Gail Zigman. In the earliest novels, she is a realtor elected to selectwoman (a member of the town’s ruling council). Throughout the novel, her career follows a steady upward trajectory. She volunteers at a women’s crisis center and becomes a prosecutor in the state attorney’s office after earning a law degree. Eventually, she is elected to the state senate. Her relationship with Gunther is exclusive and long-term, if often precarious. In many ways, they are opposites: She is a vegetarian with liberal political leanings, while Gunther is resolutely moderate. He respects Gail and seems almost to be in awe of her. By The Second Mouse (2006), their relationship appears to be over.

As seen from the progression of Gail’s career, time does pass in Mayor’s Vermont. Gail goes from realtor to state senator. Stanley Katz, the crime reporter for the local paper, leaves for a job in a neighboring town but is lured back to his original employer, becoming editor of the town paper. In later novels, Willy Kunkle and Sammie Martins slowly develop an unlikely romantic relationship.

Other, larger changes also occur, almost in the backdrop of the individual mysteries. Political challenges abound; the state’s attorney is constantly threatened to lose the next election and must court public opinion while prosecuting his cases. In Occam’s Razor (1999), Gunther himself is drawn into a political quagmire over creating a new law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction and some degree of oversight. His promotion to a leadership position within the Vermont Bureau of Investigation further complicates his reluctant support of the measure, as it earns him varying degrees of hostility from his erstwhile peers in agencies across the state.

Mayor has said that to him, mysteries are less about puzzles than they are about process, as befits the police procedural subgenre. He is more interested in character than in the convolutions of plot. Although the crimes described in his novels are frequently sensational, even horrific, they remain within the bounds of credibility. It is apparent in the Joe Gunther novels that Mayor is interested in the motivations that drive his characters’ actions. He has indicated that the germ of each novel is the antagonist and that person’s motivation. He decides who committed the crime and why and lets the narrative develop around it organically rather than working from a strict outline.

People are seldom all good or all evil in Mayor’s novels, and the author and his protagonist, Joe Gunther, both seem highly attuned to the wide range of effects people have on one another. In the earlier novels, in which Gunther is the narrator, this is handled very adroitly; many of the insights that lead Gunther to the solution of a case come from his almost preternatural awareness of how his words and actions make other people feel. In the later novels, the third-person narrator’s allusions to Gunther’s sensitivity to the feelings of those around him may seem out of keeping with a character in his position. Still, that quality makes Gunther both unique and credible as the protagonist in an extended cycle of detective novels.

Open Season

In Open Season (1988), the first Joe Gunther novel, Gunther investigates the murder by a widow of a wealthy young man who is looking for his dog and the assault on a young woman by a man wearing a ski mask. He finds these incidents are linked because three years ago, the widow and the woman both served on a jury that found a Vietnam veteran guilty of killing a young woman. Gunther is discouraged from pursuing the case; the man in the ski mask pursues him, and he is injured in an auto accident in which the police chief dies. The climactic scene is in a snowstorm, and Mayor tidily wraps up the ends and reveals the masked man's identity.

The Second Mouse

In The Second Mouse (2006), the seventeenth book in the series, Gunther senses something strange about Michelle Fisher’s death. However, when he tries to get an autopsy done, he runs into political problems that keep medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom from doing her work. Gunther is presented with another challenge involving Mel Martin, a petty criminal aiming to become a big-time player with his wife, Nancy, and friend Ellis, who may have other ideas. Mayor skillfully plays out the moves in each case, as readers wonder if and how these cases may be related.

Principal Series Characters:

• Joe Gunther is a police lieutenant in Brattleboro, Vermont, who eventually becomes head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. He is a thoughtful man of simple tastes, not given to strong expressions or violent gestures. Years after his first wife succumbed to cancer, Joe becomes involved with Gail Zigman, a woman of strong character who is in many ways his opposite: She is a vegetarian, while he prefers prepackaged convenience foods; she works in the public eye, while Gunther prefers to work behind the scenes. Gunther’s sensitivity to the thoughts and actions of those around him is perhaps his greatest strength, often leading to the inspiration or insight that solves the case.
• Willy Kunkle, Gunther’s colleague is also his foil. Impulsive in word and action, Kunkle is as abrasive as Gunther is unassuming. Although both men have their demons, they react to them differently. A former New York City police officer, Kunkle has a checkered past: He has lost the use of his left arm because of a bullet wound, and he is known to have been a heavy drinker and to have abused his wife.

Bibliography

“About.” Archer Mayor, archermayor.com/about. Accessed 30 July 2024.

Barlow, Rich. “A Vermont Mystery Haunts with Its Details.” Review of St. Albans Fire, by Archer Mayor. Boston Globe, 31 Jan. 2006, p. C4.

Batten, Jack. “One Smart Hayseed.” Review of The Surrogate Thief, by Archer Mayor. Toronto Star, 12 Dec. 2004, p. C19.

Breen, Jon L. “The Police Procedural.” In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, I-II, edited by Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. New York: Scribner’s, 1998.

Ford, Royal. “Novelist Seeks Out ’The Real Stuff.’” Boston Globe, 16 Apr. 1995, p. 36.

Healy, Carrie. “Time to 'Recharge and Take a Deep Breath:' Archer Mayor Takes a Break from Mystery Writing.” NEPM, 15 July 2022, www.nepm.org/regional-news/2022-07-15/time-to-recharge-and-take-a-deep-breath-archer-mayor-takes-a-break-from-mystery-writing. Accessed 30 July 2024.

Mayor, Archer. “PW Talks with Archer Mayor.” Interview by Louise Jones. Publishers Weekly, vol. 248, no. 42, 15 Oct. 2001, p. 49.