I was maybe about twenty pages into Archer Mayor’s novel, The Price of Malice, when I thought that this had to be a part of a series. Come to find out after the fact, it is one of 32 novels involving the detective character, Joe Gunther. Go figure.
Mayor’s writing style did remind me a little bit of James Patterson, whose Alex Cross series I’ve read several books over the years. That too I started somewhere in the middle of the lead character’s journey. These two authors both have the gift of no making things confusing though. Enough is shared about these characters like you are reading about them for the first time, but it’s light enough to likely not annoy loyal fans. From there, you just get more familiar with the characters as they interact with each other and other persons of interest.
What really clued me into this novel being probably in the middle of a series is that Joe was really concerned for Lyn, a staple in his life and perhaps a somewhat more recent love. It felt like Lyn’s story was in the middle of something bigger, but I still didn’t fell shorted by what I got from this read. Otherwise, the main draw of the novel was that a pedophile was found severely mutilated in a random woman’s apartment. It was interesting how much man-power was put into investigating this degenerate’s death, especially given that lots of people knew about him and no one liked him. Still, that’s just one difficult aspect of that line of work.
Lyn on the other hand, was back in her hometown in Maine, reeling from the news that her deceased father and brother’s boat was found and that Joe thinks maybe they weren’t lost at sea at all. Lyn comes across headstrong and impatient, so it’s not surprising that she muscles her way into conversations for more information. Turns out her poking around gets her more than she bargained for and even kidnapped! Given that the novel’s central crime is happening in Vermont, this novel sees Joe as more of a middle man while Lyn makes headway up north and his team is covering the case locally. I do like this approach as it gives secondary characters in the main cast more time to shine. I was particularly fond of Sam.
While this book was a nice and easy read, I can’t say that I’ll be searching for more Joe Gunther novels in the future. I came across this book almost for free, so I gave it a shot. If detective novels are your thing, then for sure check out more of Mayor’s work! Actually, I would be interested in reading his first Joe Gunther novel, published in 1988 and his most recent, published this year. That’d be cool to see what all has changed. The Price of Malice landed near the middle being published in 2009, so anything is possible really.