Earliest Archer Mayor Mysteries: OPEN SEASON and BORDERLINES

Archer Mayor's own design

First edition hardcover

When I first read OPEN SEASON (1988), I was struck by the amount of time Archer Mayor spent describing his locale: the city of Brattleboro, in southeastern Vermont, where police lieutenant Joe Gunther steps into the middle of an unsettled, and unsettling, murder/vendetta involving an old court case. Gail Zigman, whose intimate partnership with Joe changes drastically as the books go on, is here; so is the medical examiner in Burlington, Dr. Hillstrom. And Gunther's boss is pipe-smoking Tony Brandt. Others here who'll keep appearing include "Stan, Stan, the newspaper man," and detective J. P. Tyler.

British hardcover, rather poor copy

First paperback cover

The tight plotting of this police procedural somehow still allowed room for architectural details, weather complexity, and character growth. Looking back today, I see the advantages an author has in a first book: as much time as needed to polish, fine-tune, adjust. Wasn't it Archer Mayor who said later that the toughest book to write in a series is the second one, the one when there's suddenly a contractual deadline? I think so.

First edition hardcover

First paperback cover

And the second Archer Mayor/Joe Gunther book was BORDERLINES (1990). Set in the most inaccessible part of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, Essex County, it took Joe Gunther to a temporary post as investigator for a State's Attorney about as far as he can be from Brattleboro. Things haven't been going well with Gail Zigman; Joe is looking for a "geographic cure" for the weight he's carrying. When he collides with a situation of erupting violence in a cult "out there" (and yes, I recall exactly the "real" events behind this one), Joe gets exactly the pressure cooker of investigation and risk that he thought he wanted. Lester Spinney joins him for part of the investigation and will reappear in later books.

Archer Mayor's own design

Covers for these two are an interesting challenge for a collector. Simple designs came with the hardcover first editions; the British cover for OPEN SEASON took a more haunting route, with a figure in black leather jacket and gloves clutching a shotgun. Then there are the "Art Deco" paperback covers that followed, and finally the elegant ones that Mayor chose when he took back his rights to the titles, late in their publishing lives, in order to bring out a set of trade-sized (larger than the standard paperback) volumes.

Expect hardcover firsts to show some edge wear on the dust jackets, and unfortunately, some foxing on page edges. The paper wasn't the best. But wow, what great stories.