We are currently working on the first book of the Joe Gunther mystery series, Open Season, by Archer Mayor. Joe Gunther is a middle-aged major crimes police detective, presently working for the fictional Vermont Bureau of Investigation as its field force commander. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, is an unmarried widower with a girlfriend named Lyn, and heads up a three-person squad, as well as being responsible for the VBI’s overall, state-wide operations.
This current portrait was not always so. Joe began life in 1988 in a novel entitled Open Season as an investigator for the Brattleboro Police Department, located in Vermont’s southeastern corner. By and large he had the same team of colleagues, whom he brought with him when he transferred to the VBI halfway through the series, but he had a different girlfriend.
The series of Joe Gunther books, now numbering 20 (see archermayor.com for details,) technically fit into the “police procedural” category. They mostly take place in Vermont or other parts of rural New England, although some of the action has also been portrayed occurring as far afield as Chicago, New York, Boston, Montreal, and Sherbrooke.
These are books driven less by the posing of a riddle (as in Agatha Christie novels,) and more by the quirks of the characters inhabiting them. Archer has chosen to represent a real world environment and to show how the police, the crooks, and the populace in between often blunder their way to a resolution. As a result, the topics that he selects range among rape, illegal immigration, drug dealing, homicide, theft, and many more. Along the way, he observes and comments upon human beings in general, the various ways they interact, and the geography they inhabit. At last, of course, virtually as a continuing sub-story, Archer weaves all the books together with the ongoing background activities and interminglings of the regular characters, whose personal developments have made them favorite topics of discussion among his growing number of fans.
The series has been lauded by critics from the beginning, who have claimed Archer to be among the best practitioners of his craft in the US. His stories are not dark, necessarily, but they do avoid the more touristy attributes of New England to focus instead on trailer park residents, the back streets of post-industrial towns, the in-fighting of small urban politicians, and the run-of-the-mill crimes that only make the back pages of most newspapers.
We have two episodes of "Open Season" adapted: Episode One (script / Podcast) and Episode Two (script).