Complicated family, hidden history, disguised murder

“Marked Man” by Archer Mayor is part of the series featuring Special Agent Joe Gunther, Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Characters, both new and recurring, are described in detail within the context of the situation. Readers get to know the players through personal details and background information dropped in as part of the narrative. The story opens in an unusual way when a medical student at the University of Vermont finds something unfamiliar, and suddenly the classroom cadaver ceases to be an instructional tool and instead becomes a case for the state medical examiner.

Alternating points of view take readers back and forth among several seemingly separate stories told by different people with diverse perspectives. Gunther and team are investigating a rash of unexplained deaths. Members of a prominent family are dying one by one. Is someone from the outside killing off people or is the murderer a member of the messed-up family? The missing piece in this tangled and complicated mess is “why.” Other characters are investigating not only these tragic deaths but additional problematic activities as well. Is it possible that each of these events is a little sliver of the same case? It is almost as if people are working on a jigsaw puzzle made up of pieces from four different boxes; nothing really fits together.
At first, the narrative seems disconnected with lots of balls being juggled in the air at one time while readers wonder which will fall first. This is far from the truth, and even the book’s title hints at the surprising and shocking connection. The story has a lot of family members with complex relationships, and I was tempted to make a family chart, but even that was complicated. Just reading about them made me understand why people wanted them dead.
I received a review copy of “Marked Man” from Archer Mayor, Minotaur Books, and Macmillan Publishing. Each book in the “Joe Gunther Series” is strong, well organized, and stands on its own. Continuing characters wander in and out of complex plots giving readers an opportunity to know them as “real” people with strengths and weaknesses, mistakes and successes. The books do not have to be read in order, so those who might have missed a few in the series can easily go back and read them now. ( )

A year after a local millionaire’s death, it is discovered that he did not die of natural causes as assumed. Marked Man by Archer Mayor uses this event as the jumping-off point for the latest in the long-running Joe Gunther series.

A year after Nathon Lyon died of seemingly natural causes in the former mill which he converted into a 150,000-square foot living space, it’s discovered that he was murdered. Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team are called in and soon discover that Nathan is not who he appeared to be. He has a past drenched in mob connections and the relationship among his family members who live and work in the converted mill is a complicated web. When more family members begin dying, Joe knows he and the VBI have some work in front of them to unravel this mystery.

Mayor lays all the pieces of this mystery out like a jigsaw puzzle. A private investigator hired by one of the family businesses headquartered in the former mill and a pair of old mobsters looking into a mob hit add more pieces to the puzzle. Mayor’s real skill comes when he begins to assemble all these disparate puzzle pieces into a solution that is both surprising and satisfying. The characters are well-drawn, each with distinctive traits and real personality. The members of Joe’s VBI team particularly so. They all have very different styles but their shared curiosity and thoughtfulness provide a common thread that makes it easy to understand why they function so well as a team.

The story is a little slow at times, particularly in the middle, but great characters and a skillfully assembled mystery make this a book and series worth checking out.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. ( )

Archer Mayor's long-running Vermont-based series is a comfort read for me. It's fun to meet the same characters every year. The author does an exceptional job of depicting work relationships guided by a boss who (contrary to crime fiction cliche) is a good guy who cares about his team and has a lot of common sense.

In this outing, we are thrust into an upside-down manor house mystery, the kind where wealthy folks living in luxury begin to be picked off. But in this case, the patriarch is a mobbed up crook who forces people to live in his converted mill under his control, even though they almost all hate one another. It's a real nest of vipers. As the police investigate the suddenly suspicious death of the patriarch (only discovered long after his death, when a medical student dissects his body and finds a crushed hyoid bone, indicative of strangulation instead of natural causes), two low-level mobsters from Rhode Island are conducting their own parallel investigation, with neither group aware of the other.

I struggled to sort out the characters - there are many, and their relationships are tangled - and wished there was a character list. A family tree would be even more helpful, though it might contain spoilers. Toward the end I finally had them straightened out, but the first half was quite a challenge. The ending is quite abrupt, but leaves readers with a morally interesting and unexpected last-minute twist.