Joe Gunther Books in Order
Part ofArcher Mayor Books in OrderSee the Joe Gunther series by Archer Mayor in order, with plot notes, series background, and guidance on the best place to start reading these mysteries.
Last updated: December 23, 2025
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).
Publication Order
33 books
Fall Guy
by Archer Mayor
2022
A stolen luxury car abandoned in Vermont holds a dead burglar in the trunk and a trove of loot from jobs across two states. Among the discarded cell phones lies evidence from a notorious child abduction, pulling Joe Gunther's task force into a grim hunt for a hidden predator.
Marked Man
by Archer Mayor
2021
When a medical student realizes that wealthy philanthropist Nathan Lyon did not die a natural death after his body is donated to science, Joe Gunther uncovers that Lyon was really Nick Bianchi, with deep mob ties. As relatives in his vast converted mill start dying, family secrets and criminal debts collide.
The Orphan's Guilt
by Archer Mayor
2020
A routine drunk driving arrest sends defense lawyers to private eye Sally Kravitz, who starts asking why the driver's disabled brother really died. Joe Gunther's team peels back decades of medical records, guilt, and financial fraud to expose who benefited from a childhood accident that was anything but simple.
Bomber's Moon
by Archer Mayor
2019
After a small-time drug dealer is murdered, what looks routine soon tangles Joe Gunther's team with an elite prep school, political money, and professional thieves. Reporter Sally Kravitz and private investigator Rachel Reiling chase angles the police cannot, uncovering a much older and darker enterprise.
Bury the Lead
by Archer Mayor
2018
A murdered young woman near a ski trail, escalating sabotage at a major Vermont employer, and a frightening Ebola outbreak at a local hospital all seem unrelated at first. Joe Gunther's team slowly uncovers ties through one angry former worker and a web of corporate and personal betrayals.
Trace
by Archer Mayor
2017
With Joe Gunther pulled away to care for his ailing mother, the VBI juggles three demanding cases: a young woman apparently targeted by a hit man, a notorious trooper shooting from years ago, and an elaborate theft scheme. As threads converge, even veteran investigators misread the traces.
Presumption of Guilt
by Archer Mayor
2017
When demolition crews break up a concrete slab at a closed nuclear plant, they uncover the skeleton of Hank Mitchell, missing since 1970. Joe Gunther's team digs into old construction graft and laundered mob money, then races to respond when fresh murder and a hostage taking hit close to home.
The Company She Kept
by Archer Mayor
2015
During a brutal Vermont winter, the body of state senator Susan Raffner is found hanging from a highway rock face, the word dyke carved into her chest. As a governor's confidante and political star, she leaves Joe Gunther balancing a volatile investigation with statewide scrutiny.
Proof Positive
by Archer Mayor
2014
Reclusive Vietnam veteran Ben Kendall dies when the towering piles inside his farmhouse collapse, but the scene feels wrong to medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom. Joe Gunther learns Kendall hoarded combat photos someone is desperate to erase, and his cousin Rachel becomes the next target.
Three Can Keep a Secret
by Archer Mayor
2013
In the wake of a devastating Vermont hurricane, a long-buried coffin washes open to reveal it was filled with rocks, not a body. As Joe Gunther also investigates a retired politician's death and a vanished mental patient called The Governor, an old political secret slowly surfaces.
Paradise City
by Archer Mayor
2012
After an elderly woman surprises burglars in her Boston townhouse and is killed, clues link the crime to a wave of sophisticated break-ins in Vermont. Joe Gunther teams up with Boston detectives and the victim's determined granddaughter to track stolen jewels into the so-called paradise of Northampton.
Tag Man
by Archer Mayor
2011
A nimble burglar slips into wealthy Vermont homes at night, samples fine food, and leaves only a Post-it reading, You're it. Dubbed the Tag Man, he becomes both hunter and prey after stumbling on chilling evidence that someone much worse has been hiding in plain sight.
Red Herring
by Archer Mayor
2010
Three people in rural Vermont die by very different means, yet each body bears a single unexplained drop of someone else's blood. As political campaigns rage in the background, Joe Gunther's team turns to cutting edge forensics to decode the taunting trail left by a meticulous killer.
The Price of Malice
by Archer Mayor
2009
Wayne Castine, a suspected child predator entangled with an extended trailer park family, is found savagely murdered, and everyone around him has motive. While Joe Gunther's team follows that case, he keeps slipping away to coastal Maine, helping Lyn Silva probe her own family's deadly secrets.
The Catch
by Archer Mayor
2008
When a Vermont deputy is gunned down during a routine traffic stop, Joe Gunther's team traces the killers to a coastal drug pipeline. A charismatic lobsterman turned trafficker hides product among the boats and coves of New England, forcing the investigators offshore and undercover.
Chat
by Archer Mayor
2007
A suspicious crash that nearly kills Joe Gunther's mother and brother points to a violent local clan with a grudge. At the same time, two eerie, similar deaths lead the VBI into anonymous internet chat rooms where predators hunt teenagers behind friendly screen names.
The Second Mouse
by Archer Mayor
2006
In blue collar Bennington, Michelle Fisher is found dead in a house that is about to be sold, with no clear sign of violence. Joe Gunther reads her postcards, diaries, and debts, and slowly links her lonely life to a trio of increasingly reckless criminals.
St. Albans Fire
by Archer Mayor
2005
A rash of barn and building fires across Vermont soon looks like the work of a careful arsonist. With the VBI stretched from rural dairy farms to the streets of Newark, Joe Gunther must connect scattered blazes before the firebug's attacks turn into a full-scale murder spree.
The Surrogate Thief
by Archer Mayor
2004
A domestic shooting brings to light a gun linked to an unsolved storekeeper's murder from Joe Gunther's early career, when his wife was dying and he let the case go cold. Haunted by that failure, he reopens the file and uncovers dangerous political and personal fallout.
Gatekeeper
by Archer Mayor
2003
A string of drug deaths and killings in Vermont - a teen robber gunned down, a dealer hanged from a bridge, a politician's granddaughter overdosed - pushes Joe Gunther's team into a multiagency war on heroin. Going undercover, Sammie Martens risks everything to expose the pipeline.
The Sniper's Wife
by Archer Mayor
2002
When Willy Kunkle's ex-wife is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose in her New York apartment, he refuses to believe it was an accident. Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens follow Willy into his rough past, from city streets to Vietnam scars, to confront whoever wanted Mary silenced.
Tucker Peak
by Archer Mayor
2001
Called to a luxury ski resort called Tucker Peak, Joe Gunther's VBI team expects minor thefts and environmental protests. Instead they find embezzlement, violent sabotage, and murder, forcing them to sort genuine activism from criminal cover as the resort's secrets come crashing down.
The Marble Mask
by Archer Mayor
2000
When a frozen corpse is found on a Vermont mountaintop and dated back to the 1940s, Joe Gunther's newly formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation gets its first big case. The victim was a Canadian crime boss, and old grudges now threaten to ignite a new cross-border gang war.
Occam's Razor
by Archer Mayor
1999
A headless, handless body left on railroad tracks looks like a vagrant hit by a train, until clean underwear and unusual chemical burns suggest staging. As more deaths surface, Joe Gunther follows a twisted trail toward a politically connected figure who would rather keep things simple.
The Disposable Man
by Archer Mayor
1997
An unidentified man with Russian tattoos is found strangled in a Vermont quarry, and suddenly both the CIA and the Russian underworld seem interested. When Joe Gunther is framed for theft, he realizes someone sees him as expendable and must fight to clear his name.
Bellows Falls
by Archer Mayor
1996
Loaned to the hard-luck town of Bellows Falls, Joe Gunther is asked to probe a harassment complaint against a local cop. The deeper he digs into the Bouch family and their disappearing young dealers, the more the case looks like a frame-up masking a wider drug network.
The Ragman's Memory
by Archer Mayor
1995
A child's discovery of human hair woven into a bird's nest leads Joe Gunther to the murder of a teenage runaway, a missing activist, and a series of suspicious deaths tied to a controversial development deal. Only a traumatized World War II veteran may hold the crucial memory.
The Dark Root
by Archer Mayor
1994
A vicious home invasion in Brattleboro's small Asian community exposes a shadowy smuggling corridor moving people, drugs, and contraband across the Canadian border. As rival underworld factions turn on each other, Joe Gunther must work with federal and Canadian agencies before the violence spills wider.
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
by Archer Mayor
1993
When town official Gail Zigman, Joe Gunther's longtime companion, is brutally raped, Joe takes the case despite the conflict of interest. A single suspect soon seems to fit every clue a bit too neatly, forcing Joe to question his own judgment and the justice system itself.
The Skeleton's Knee
by Archer Mayor
1992
A recluse living on a remote Vermont hillside appears to have died quietly, until an autopsy reveals a decades-old bullet lodged in his body. Joe Gunther follows the trail to buried cash, an unmarked grave, and someone willing to kill again to keep the past hidden.
Scent of Evil
by Archer Mayor
1991
When a fast-living stockbroker is found buried near a busy street, suspicion falls on the policeman whose wife was having an affair with him. As more bodies drop and a wiretap appears in his office, Joe Gunther hunts a vengeful killer inside a corrupt circle.
Borderlines
by Archer Mayor
1990
Looking for a quieter assignment, Joe Gunther takes a temporary post in Gannet, the Vermont town of his childhood summers. After a fire kills members of an isolationist sect and a worried father is stabbed, Joe uncovers arson, buried loyalties, and small-town fear.
Open Season
by Archer Mayor
1988
Brattleboro detective Joe Gunther investigates when a wealthy young man is shot by a terrified widow and other former jurors from an old murder trial begin to die. Digging into the rushed conviction, he clashes with local politics and buried grudges.
Series background & context
Joe Gunther is the steady center of Archer Mayor's long running crime series. When readers first meet him in Open Season, he is a seasoned lieutenant in the Brattleboro, Vermont, police department, a man who knows every back street and barroom in town. Over time he moves into the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, but he keeps the same quiet, observant approach.
Place matters as much as plot in these books. The investigations play out in mill towns like Bellows Falls, ski resorts, college cities, farms, and trailer parks, all under real weather and real economic pressure. Vermont comes across as beautiful and stressed at the same time, with tourism and privilege sitting next to poverty, addiction, and old grudges.
The Joe Gunther novels are police procedurals at heart. Cases are built through interviews, forensics, autopsies, and slow, patient legwork, not sudden confessions. Joe and his colleagues often work alongside local departments, federal agents, and Canadian officers, which lets the series explore how different agencies and personalities collide when a case crosses borders.
A big part of the appeal is the team that grows around Joe. Willy Kunkle is a one armed former city cop and Vietnam veteran whose anger masks fierce loyalty. Sammie Martens brings ambition and empathy, Lester Spinney offers calm and family rooted perspective, and medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom grounds the books in the reality of bodies and evidence. Politician Gail Zigman, first introduced as Joe's partner, pulls the stories into town halls and state politics.
Across the series, the crimes themselves vary widely. Some books dig into cold cases or long buried war stories, like a frozen crime boss on a mountain or a skeleton sealed inside a nuclear plant. Others tackle current concerns: drug trafficking and arson in dairy country, online predators in Chat, high tech forensics in Red Herring, and political murder in The Company She Kept.
Stylistically, the books are grounded and unsentimental. Violence and loss have weight, but there is also dry humor, small human kindnesses, and the comfort of familiar faces showing up book after book. Joe ages, his relationships shift, colleagues get hurt or promoted, and the Vermont he serves changes with them, which gives the series a lived in, cumulative feel.
Each entry can be read as a stand alone mystery, so new readers can jump in almost anywhere, whether with early titles like The Ragman's Memory or later ones such as Tag Man and Fall Guy. Reading in order, though, lets you watch the full arc of Joe Gunther's career and the evolving story of the small, complicated state he calls home.
Edited by
Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.
Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.



















































Comments
Did we miss something? Have feedback?
Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts