Tue 24 Jul 2018
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: ARCHER MAYOR – Fruits of the Poisonous Tree.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
ARCHER MAYOR – Fruits of the Poisonous Tree. Joe Gunther #5. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995.
I’ve been blowing the trumpet for Mayor since the first Joe Gunther novel (Open Season) appeared back in 1988. I haven’t changed my mind. There’s no one in his class other than Michael Connelly writing American police fiction today.
Brattleboro, Vermont Lieutenant Joe Gunther is about to be involved in the most traumatic and challenging case of his career: the brutal assault and rape of his long time lover, Town Selectwoman Gail Zigman. No one wants him on the case but Gail; not his Chief, and certainly not the State Attorney who is in the middle of a bitter re-election battle.
He is allowed to head the investigation jointly with his Chief, finally, albeit with restrictions. And so he begins, fighting his own personal battle to understand what is happening to and with Gail, and to keep his emotions under sufficient control to do his job.
This is the best from Mayor to date, and the others have been excellent. He does an utterly convincing job of conveying the emotional trauma with which both victim and lover must cope, while at the same time narrating a first-class police procedural.
His prose is lean and spare, with little or none of the lyrical qualities that have occasionally been shown in the past. The story is taut and suspenseful, and to me at least, completely convincing. Were this ot a “genre” book it would have no doubt been padded and sensationalized, and sold many more copies. As ot is, it illustrates why crime fiction offers much of the best storytelling around today.
July 24th, 2018 at 5:28 am
I’ve read all of Mayor’s books since the first and generally liked them a lot (the last one was not one of the best). I particularly like that rather than the same old thing every time, each book takes place in a different part of Vermont.
July 24th, 2018 at 8:54 am
I’m not sure why Mayor remains a sort of highly prized secret among readers. Maybe because the books don’t rehash the same location and plot endlessly, but vary greatly.
I do think Barry makes a good point about Crime Writer vs mystery, hard-boiled, or cozy, and that may be the problem, because the books often seem packaged as cozies (note that cover), which they aren’t.
In any case Mayor writes well with lean prose not frightened of lyric moments, but unlike some in the field not likely to overdue it. I’m not sure there is a genre niche you can nail Mayor to, he’s almost his own one man genre.
July 24th, 2018 at 12:17 pm
The last time Mayor came up for discussion on this blog, the comments following LJ Roberts’ review of TRACE, #28 in the series, I decided to go to Barnes & Noble and browse through the books of his they had on the shelves. They didn’t have a one. Either his books sell out very quickly, as soon as they come in, or he really is a secret.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=51854
July 24th, 2018 at 1:55 pm
Mayor is one of the more overlooked authors, even by myself. Read the first dozen, and have fallen off after that. This book was especially well written, as his depiction of the aftermath of the rape is handled very well.
Maybe because his books deal with a reality most books don’t deal with and his characters are not super heroes hurts his popularity. If so, that is a shame.
July 24th, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Although his style is nothing like him I am reminded of K. C. Constantine in regards to the feel of reality the books deliver. Without being showy about it his style is very literate with few bows to melodrama or some of the more obvious tropes of suspense and mystery most writers depend on. In Mayor’s work the plot almost always arises out of character.