Review by Booklist Review
A cop spends his off-hours on surveillance outside a dope house, staking out his own teenage son inside. Another cop feels compelled to enter a search-and-save campaign when her niece, strung out on heroin, is shot in an attempted robbery at a convenience store. In scenes like these, where the lines between dopers and coppers are smudged by family ties, Mayor delivers a powerful portrayal of how far-reaching the effects of addiction are. This explosive antiprocedural uncovers the near impossibility of the war against drugs, as it shows both the flood of drugs and how police are often rendered helpless by departmental politics and fears for the safety of their loved ones. Mayor adds shock value by setting the heroin invasion in bucolic Vermont, an invasion announced by the hanging of a street dealer from a railroad trestle. Joe Gunther, special agent with the newly created Vermont Bureau of Investigations, and the cops who work for him are given an impossible, politically motivated assignment: eliminate heroin from the state. As one of their female agents embarks on an extended buy-bust campaign, and as other cops confront drugs within their own families, Gunther is faced with dilemma after dilemma as his own officers' lives are pitted against those of drug users. A wrenching, no-easy-answers look at current narcotics tactics, set off by intriguing characters. --Connie Fletcher Copyright 2003 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Like The Sniper's Wife (2002), Mayor's 14th Joe Gunther mystery uses third-person narrative to offer multiple points of view, notably that of impetuous detective Sammie Martens, but it may disappoint readers expecting the previous novel's brilliance. When a Rutland drug dealer is found murdered, the governor pressures the Vermont Bureau of Investigation to join various other police and anti-drug agencies in an effort to eliminate drug trafficking in the state. This unwieldy group is one-upped by Martens when she goes undercover as Greta Novak, a hard-charging drug distributor wannabe. She convinces the head of the Holyoke, Mass., network who controls drugs in Vermont that she can organize business-like distribution in Rutland. Her success comes too quickly; by the book's end she discovers she's been tricked by the very people she was deceiving. Mayor emphasizes the pervasiveness of narcotics in Vermont with two subplots: Gunther's long-time lover, Gail Zigman, discovers her niece is a heroin addict who's been robbing convenience stores to support her habit; VBI detective Lester Spinney learns that his hard work and love for his family doesn't prevent his teenage son from experimenting with drugs. With his skill at evoking place and character, Mayor is always fun to read. But with a flat, albeit realistic, ending and repetitious descriptions of the state's law enforcement system, this is not one of his best. (Oct. 29) Forecast: Mayor got a national author tour on The Sniper's Wife, but for this one he's only doing a regional New England tour. The theme of drug trafficking in bucolic Vermont may lure new readers, but this won't be the book to break him out. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A bit older, a tad slower, a shade more New England dour, Special Agent Joe Gunther (The Sniper's Wife, 2002, etc.) chases a passel of wannabe druglords as entertainingly as ever. The Vermont Bureau of Investigation, where Joe is second in command, is still wet behind the ears as law-enforcement bodies go, causing more established bodies to tread warily around it. Converts have been made, but because Joe knows that "observing turf" remains the order of the day, he absolutely hates it when a certain kind of politician holds a certain kind of press conference. The trafficking of heroin has had its day in the state of Vermont, trumpets Governor Jim Reynolds, up for reelection. The VBI--identified as an elite force uniquely qualified, indeed the governor's special creation--will interdict the nasty stuff, he announces, as Joe winces at the sound of noses snapping out of joint. But Joe, who claims to despise the politics surrounding his job, is in truth a dab hand. Smart and sensitive, he placates the ruffled, prods the reluctant, and, aided and abetted by his "elite force," sends the druggies to permanent detox, earning the thanks of a grateful governor--and incidentally solves a pair of attendant murders and, as usual, some knotty domestic problems as well. Quiet, unassuming, yet charismatic, the ever-readable Sage of Brattleboro shines in his lucky 13th. Page-turner Joe, they call him. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
