The Marble Mask

Joe Gunther #11

by Archer Mayor

Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, is the head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with statewide responsibility for major crimes. In The Marble Mask, the VBI's first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. Some of the more interesting minor characters in author Archer Mayor's long-running series about the amiable elder sleuth make return appearances here as Joe's teammates--like one-armed Willy, a former wife-beater who's now playing footsie with Sammie Martens, one of Joe's favorite colleagues. When the frozen stiff turns out to be a (formerly) big-time Canadian crime boss named Jean Deschamps, who disappeared after World War II, Joe and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Sûreté, and the local cops in Sherbrooke, where Deschamps's son Marcel is involved in a turf war with the Hell's Angels and a rival gang of thugs. Old secrets and intrigues come to light while an intricate plan to frame a dying man for a crime half a century old forms an interesting puzzle that's not fully revealed until the last couple of pages.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Audiobook, Procedural, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

309 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

Over the years, Archer Mayor has been photographer, teacher, historian, scholarly editor, feature writer, travel writer, lab technician, political advance man, medical illustrator, newspaper writer, history researcher, publications consultant, constable, and EMT/firefighter. He is also half Argentine, speaks two languages, and has lived in several countries on two continents.

All of which makes makes him restless, curious, unemployable, or all three. Whatever he is, it’s clearly not cured, since he’s currently a novelist, a death investigator for Vermont’s medical examiner, and a police officer.

Archer has been producing the Joe Gunther novels since 1988, some of which have made the “ten best” or “most notable” lists of the Los Angeles and the New York Times. In 2004 Mayor received the New England Booksellers Association book award for fiction.

Intriguing plots, complex characters, and a vivid landscape are the foundation of Archer Mayor's award-winning New England thrillers.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is my third and final attempt to care for this character. 0 of 10 stars

[Erth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm hooked on Joe Gunther and the other characters, Sammie Martens and Willy Kunkle. This was the first novel with them being part of the newly formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation and dealt, as a side plot, with their trying to find their place among the rest of Vermont's established police force. Also, I liked the idea of Sammie and Willy having a romantic relationship, two unlikely people linking up. The author's descriptive voice always come through giving the reader a vivid picture of Vermont's towns and, in this one, the Canadian side of the border and the working together of the two to solve the murder. Definitely a good read.

[Phyllis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much time spent on the complexities of the various Vermont law enforcement groups. Also too much time describing where everything was in Vermont and Quebec when a map would have sufficed (a picture is worth a 1000 words!). Completely unrealistic was how often Joe Gunther just missed dying. And gullible -- he fell for everything! And Willie Kunkle got away with behavior that I can’t believe would be tolerated.

[Abbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

#11 Joe Gunther, Special Agent In Charge, Vermont Bureau of Investigation; police procedural/thriller.

Canadian and Vermont locations, the French mob and Hell's Angels, World War 2 commandos, and a frozen corpse enliven the first case for the new VBI, as Joe and friends (police agencies, Canadiens and Vermonters) work their way slowly through an extremely convoluted case that crosses over and back across the border repeatedly. And complicating things even more, the current Big Boss of the mob is almost dead from cancer, and his heir-apparent seems to be completely nuts.

Some of the usual characters in Joe's life are along for the show, though, and help to make things interesting, even as we get introduced to several new players now that he has moved from Brattleboro Police Department to the VBI - Willy Kunkle and Sammy Martens have joined Joe there at his request, with all their emotional and historical baggage intact.

There are interesting portraits here of policing methods' differences between Surete and RCMP and American Police, as each has their own particular way of managing things. The interplay between the services as the VBI, itself a sort of conglomeration of several American/Vermont agencies, mixes with a task force of Canadian/Canadien forces as they all attempt to combat an apparent showdown coming soon between old mob forces and the Hell's Angels and a breakaway group of ex-Angels; the mob guys and the Angels had kept a working relationship for decades but the splinter group is out for blood - anybody's blood, it seems.

A strong entry in this long series, with good characterizations, wonderful settings, a bit of historical interest, lots of twists and turns, and the always likeable Joe Gunther who, although a bit of an Energizer Bunny-type (gets repeatedly hurt and just keeps on going and going...) is one of my favorite detectives. The gentle humor is very satisfying and helps to balance some of the straight-on macho shoot-em-up stuff that I find can become very wearying after a while. This is a nicely blended, very satisfying story, even though it's not the strongest one - especially emotionally - in this extremely good series.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

An OK book, but not my favorite by far in the Joe Gunter series. This one dragged a little bit and in fact, a couple of times I felt myself wondering what was going on. Like I said, it is OK of you are reading the series, but if you just want an Archer Mayor book to read, I'd skip this one.

[Cindy B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the series and it’s main character and his team. Plots are always well thought out. No cliffhangers, graphics (sex or language), well narrated by Tom Taylorson. Recommended.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, I don’t think this series is for me 😕

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Mayor has found a way to broaden Joe Gunther's territory outside of Brattleboro and open up lots of new plot lines. These are fun to read although Gunther gets the crap beat out of him constantly (and bounces back well for a man his age). Always fun stuff to be found here if you don't take it too seriously!!

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, I loved it. Joe Gunther character always keeps me interested.

[Cindy B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like the series and characters. Good plot however although main character doesn’t usually use profanity, he does say the f word once in this one. Well narrated. Recommended with that provision.

[Kimberly Morehouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great mystery..... a murder of a frozen man found, that was killed in the 1940s. They soon discover he has ties to a corrupt family from Canada. The killer could be rivals, in the organization or someone keeping him from looking in to his sons death. Interesting seeing the way they tackle a murder from so long ago and across country lines as well. Excellent story!

[David Highton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Joe Gunther story is his first outing of the new statewide major crimes agency, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, with a frozen corpse is discovered and identified as a Canadian citizen missing since 1947

[Lawanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook performed by Tom Taylorson

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I was in the doldrums with Hamilton and couldn’t resist finding out about this VBI, Willy, Sammie & Joe adventure. A 50 year old murder mystery comes from the finding of a man who is found as a “popsicle”, as Willy calls the guy.

This book was full of close calls and just an excellent plot with twists galore. Willy is more and more interesting with every book. I find his dark humor to be pretty funny, but I’m sick and twisted like that. Joe gets Willy a shot and Willy more than proves that Joe knows what’s up.

I agree with Joe, you can’t just toss people out if they’re not all that you want them to be. Each person has strengths and something worthwhile. Still waters run deep...and Vietnam totally messed up Willy’s mind. I have a feeling Willy was a special forces/secret squirrel guy and saw horrors that no one should ever see or know about.

I like Mayor’s decision to upgrade the team to a state-wide department and allow the cases to bloom out of this. The decision probably came from Joe’s case in book 2, on loan to another department in the boonies.

First read 9/20/2020. Second read 4/21/2023. Loved it more the second time. And Willy will always be my favorite grumpus.

[Benjamin A · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Marble Mask by: Archer mayor is the first book in the Joe Gunther series. This book is about Joe Gunther an investigator in the newly created Vermont Bureau of Investigation. When a dead body is found at the top of MT. Mansfield he is assigned the case. I believe that the author wanted us to understand that even if something is more complex than you can ever imagine. If you keep working at it a clear answer will emerge. This book was pretty good, the author did a good job at including many unexpected twists and turns but he was lacking I descriptive language. I would recommend this book to people who like pure mystery.

Archer Mayor is the author of the Joe Gunther detective series. He lives in Newfane Vt. He graduated from Yale and then held a job as an editor, researcher, journalist, photographer for Time-Life books. During that job he traveled to France and around the US. He published his first book in 1988 and has been writing ever since along as being a town sheriff.

[Bill McCarty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am an avid reader of Archer Mayor and his Joe Gunther series books but I would attest that this story was pure drudgery in the reading. The story simply is beyond reasonableness and left this reader disappointed.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Convoluted plot. Hard to follow.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published 2000. Probably the most complicated of all the novels I���ve read as of 2022. All the novels can be read as stand-alones and in any order. I've read many before this first one.

Mayor chooses various, always interesting, N.H. settings for his complicated, fast-moving action crime mystery plots. I'll mention names because Joe is good at maintaining relationships that he involves in future operations. His top-notch team will grow with the series.

This setting is Stowe, New Hampshire, Mt. Mansfield, one of VT's ski areas-- Joe’s first assignment as head of Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) after the finding of a frozen Canadian JEAN DESCHAMPS, with a driver’s license that expired in 1947. Maimed and murdered, he has interesting and complicated crime family history revealed throughout the investigation — Ancient secrets, international gang wars, dynasty intrigues. Ego, Pride, Revenge all motivate the family members. Downright devious characters.

Joe's team starts out with his trusted small-town Brattleboro police department trusted officers:
WILLY KUNKLE, VBI, is not at all congenial, and has a withered arm, but is nevertheless one of the best of the all-top investigators with Joes’s team.
(VBI’s immediate goal is to succeed with this experiment and then to hire additional qualified staff from various parts of the region. First hurdle is for existing traditional law enforcement to accept them. It’s designed to be state-wide in order to cut through bureaucratic red tape.)
SAMMIE MARTINS, VBI, father/daughter-like relationship since her real father abandoned her at early age. She can hold her own with the men, sharp as any, and more ambitious.
LESTER SPINNEY, VBI, is especially affable, and he and Joe have worked together the longest of the team members. All of them are like family. Which includes
RON KLESCZEWSKI, a bit awkward—he’s never sure of his own value among them. Joe appointed him leader of detectives, knowing he could do the job well.

GALE ZIGMAN is Joe’s life partner; no need for marriage at their ages; their priorities are different, but they are as close to happily married as anyone they know. She is with Vermont Green environmental agency in charge of overseeing state regulations. Their age-difference and missions and politics are very different, but it works for them, and is often advantageous.

FLATLANDERS are from out of state. Even if they now live in the state, if they’re business owners.

This first case is further complicated by needing to work with Canadian officials to first establish if he was flown in by a Canadian or U.S. citizen, the former making it Canada's Suerte case. Of course, we know our stellar team will end up with the case -- with our French-speaking liaison, PAUL , of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and GARY as the designated leader. (Joe insisted VBI will take NO credit for their work and they have to be "invited" by others to help solves cases. It will take a long time for these agencies to trust they will get all the credit.)

The Marble Mask, by Michelangelo when he was 15, was stolen from a fabulous mansion in Rome in WWII. Part goat, part man, god of forests, fields, keeping his herds safe, FAUN looks like a gargoyle, not at all benign. According to Guillermo del Toro, Faun is "a creature that is neither good or evil.... like nature....a character there to be witness and shepherd her (Ofelia) in her rite of passage, but he has no agenda. (Must refer to Federico Alvarez because he guarded all the WWII records with a trust when he died and his property became a B&B in Stowe, Vermont, with no explanation. He was the only one involved with no agenda in this tale.)

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "Acknowledgements" at the front of this book tell the reader what the marble mask of the title is. But it doesn't appear in the book until close to the end of the story, and it does not play much part in the plot.

This is the eleventh volume in Archer Mayor's fine series about Vermont law officer Joe Gunther. In the previous books in the series, Gunther was a police officer in Brattleboro. In this one, he has become a Special Agent in Charge, the second in command of a new agency, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. This is a major case unit, assigned to help wherever in the state they might be needed.

The VBI's first case involves a body found frozen on a mountain, but the deceased man had not frozen to death. He had been stabbed with something like an ice pick - and that had evidently occurred long before. All signs indicate that the body had just recently been dropped on the mountain; it seems to have spent over fifty years in a freezer. Identification shows that the man was Canadian; investigation reveals that he had been the boss of a mob.

The story becomes very complex, with folks from several different law enforcement agencies, both from Vermont and from Canada, working together to solve an increasing number of serious crimes, some far in the past, others very much in the present. There is involvement of a French-Canadian mob, Hell's Angels bikers, and some survivors of an elite World War II military group.

The details of law officers from not only different agencies but also different countries, speaking different languages, coming together and learning to trust and rely on each other makes up a large part of the book. This is not entirely convincing, but one hopes things would actually work this well.

Much of the rest of the book is even less convincing. Gunther repeatedly trusts people who are decidedly not trustworthy, and keeps putting his life in danger. The very beginning of the book portrays Gunther in danger of dying, this time due to being trapped on a freezing mountaintop in a severe snow storm; this is resolved so quickly and painlessly that it makes the build-up seem silly.

Also, the details of the crimes are so complicated that they I don't think that they make much sense.

One of the best things about most of the books in this series is the continuing development of some of the supporting characters. Willy Kunkle, Sammie Martens, and Gail Zigman are all in this book, but none of them play major roles.

Even when there are flaws in the story, it remains interesting. Gunther is such a consistently decent person that the reader can see how he can hold this disparate force together, commanding respect from the folks he supervises and the others with whom he interacts.

[Jared Castiglione · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I finished the previous book in the series, Occam’s Razor, I immediately felt like it could be read before the previous 9. It was perfect in how it dealt with the past and alluded to histories but paved the way for new and different going forward.

This is that first new and different. And I really enjoyed the plot and the story. It had everything you’d want in a thriller murder mystery that spans fifty years and two countries.

At times it was difficult to follow all the action: there was a lot of it.

In most criminal cases the team has solved, the “good guys” are usually the same cast of characters and the “bad guys” are new each case.

This time, most of the team solving the case were new, especially since there was so much happening on both sides of the border.

What worked best here is the rich past Joe Gunther has with his regulars and how he uses his position to integrate the new members in. Having read all 10 previous novels, I appreciated the past adventures he’s shared with them.

In many ways, this book should not be read out of order in the same way the previous novel could be. There’s too many little treasures that will be missed; too many moments to be appreciated.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

#11 in the Vermont police 50 something year old lieutenant joe Gunther mystery series. This a very good police procedural series showing the nitty gritty day-to-day investigating work to solve a mystery. Former Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, Joe is now the #2 man of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with statewide responsibility for major crimes and now works collaboratively with the various other police units in the state to aid in their investigations.

This is first VBI case that takes him north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse that turns out to be a former big-time Canadian crime boss who disappeared in 1947, Joe and his team cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Sûreté, and the local cops as there is both Canadian and Vermont connections. The body was kept frozen somewhere for all this time to suddenly reappear and open a complicated can of worms that Joe and team have to unravel.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Goodreads Blurb: A frozen body is found on top of Vermont's tallest mountain in the middle of winter. Lost hiker? Foul play? Hard to tell until the marble-hard body is thawed out. The body is Jean Deschamps, an old-time smuggler from Sherbrooke, Quebec, who made a fortune during the war as an industrialist.

This is the first outing for the newly formed VBI and Joe has to make it work if the new unit is to survive. Lots of players including local police in Sherbrooke, Quebec and other Canadian agencies.
Lacombe is a great character. Sometimes hard to keep the players — spread across an international border and fifty years — straight. More than a little EBS (Energizer Bunny Syndrome) at times. But a good read.

This was book #5o on our 2022 Read-alouds With Lutrecia List (and our last book of 2022). It was book #66 on our own 2022 Read-alouds List.

[Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two things made this only okay. One of which was the actual case. It was too hard to follow and pretty waa waa by the end. I think the treasure angle came too late.

The snow incident sent by waaaaay to fast. For it to be in the beginning of the story, Joe almost freezing to death, I thought there'd be more to it. It's like

I like the romance between Sammie and Willie. I mean... I'm torn on Willie. The feminist in me is like but he's a wife beater. And the reader is like redemption arcs are really good so...

Found this one only okay. But I'm interested in Joe. Love his narration. I hope he and Gail stay broken up though.

[Andrew Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting read. Gunther has to travel to Canada, notably Quebec, to find out the circumstances of a death that is over 50 years old. Language differences and cultural mores are part and parcel of this book. A body has been dumped on Mount Mansfield in Vermont that has been in cold storage since 1946. When the person is identified, then the search begins. Mayor does a good job in delineating the differences in culture and governmental structure between the two nations that share a common border. Mayor takes you on a twist and turn journey until the final culprit is identified. World War II plays a major role in this case.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe and the VBI folks are called in when a very old corpse is discovered. Turns out the guy is Canadian, which means VBI gets to work with Surete (sp?) and turns out the dead guy has been frozen for about 50 years. And off we go......again, an incredulous murder mystery but nonetheless, the story kept me entertained.

I listen to the Joe Gunther mysteries and for some reason, cannot seem to listen to them in order. They are entertaining stand-alones but would probably be even more enjoyable if I were to read/listen to them in order

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy Mayor's writing style. He's a crime writer unafraid to pile up the bodies in his book, and grisly things happen, but he writes it in a way that never feels gratuitous, in fact most of it happens off page so i never feel like i have to digest or experience the violence as a reader. it creates a higher stakes read without the fear of a more traumatic reading experience.
Lots of pieces fall into place in the last 25 pages of this one. my only complaint is that the book title is a give away.

[carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first Joe Gunther mystery I have read and it was brilliant! I loved the authors writing, especially right at the beginning when Joe was stuck in the snow and then relaying exactly what had happened beginning three days earlier. Also, thought the explanation when the group was on top of the mountain (looking for the crime scene) contained descriptions, easy enough to follow. This was #11, so I will be on the lookout for others in this series.

[LindaJ^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I discovered that the vast majority of this series was available for free to read to Audible members and immediately added nos. 2-11 to my library and went on a Joe Gunther splurge. Reading them back to back reveals some weaknesses. Joe Gunther makes a lot of rather dumb decisions. He has more lives than a cat. But the series provides entertainment, especially when walking and bike riding. I won't be writing reviews for each book at this time.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid entry in the Joe Gunther series. The split of settings—between Vermont and Canada—and of cases—between a 50-year-old cold murder case and current murders potentially related to it—makes for plenty of interest in Gunther’s first case leading a team for the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

That Vermont Bureau of Investigation special agent must have some feline DNA as he is portrayed as having way more than nine lives in surviving all the ordeals he is handed. The VBI is responsible for solving muders dating back to the end of WWII in Italy and involves some stolen artifacts abdother criminal activities in Canada and Vermont.