The Marble Mask marks the first full-fledged case for the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation, of which Joe Gunther is second-in-command. The story begins with the discovery of a frozen body on the top of Mount Mansfield near Stowe. This is no big news until it is found that the presumed lost hiker actually died fifty years ago and has been artificially frozen ever since. Not only that but he's soon found to have been a French Canadian crime boss from Sherbrooke, Quebec, whose descendants are now on the brink of a major gang war. Why was he killed? Why was he kept frozen? Why has he resurfaced in such a dramatic way so many years later? Joe and his new squad travel between the cultural divide of Canada and Vermont, uncovering -- among other things -- some long-lost secrets dating back to the Italian campaign in WWII and the existence of a combat group nicknamed "The Devil's Brigade."

AM Press, Softcover, 2007

Synopsis

A frozen body is found on top of Vermont's tallest mountain in the middle of winter. Lost hiker or foul play? Hard to tell until the marble-hard body is thawed out. A hand and a foot have been broken off, as if from a great fall, and the body's clothing looks oddly old-fashioned. An autopsy reveals an ice-pick wound to the heart, a Canadian driver's license dating back to just after World War Two, and the fact that the body's been dead and frozen for over fifty years. The corpse is that of Jean Deschamps, an old-time smuggler from Sherbrooke, Quebec, who made a fortune during the war as an industrialist. His son Michel has run the crime-family business since his father's disappearance. Both Hell's Angels and the Montreal-based Rock Machine are interested in taking over the Deschamps turf. Was the evidence suggesting that Michel killed his own father planted by those two factions? Indications are that Jean believed his older son, Antoine, had been murdered in the Italian campaign during the war, and not killed in combat as reported. And there are rumors a priceless marble mask by Michelangelo also vanished around the same time, never to be seen again, and that one of Antoine's fellow combatants is now a wealthy recluse in Stowe. Joe and his new Vermont Bureau of Investigation team, including Sam and Willy, set out to solve these riddles amid an increasingly dangerous political landscape involving cops and crooks on both sides of the border.

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Bookseller: I Cannot Live Without Books (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: 128
Title: The Marble Mask (Joe Gunther Series, Book #11)
Author: Mayor, Archer
Book Condition: New New
Quantity Available: 1
Binding: Paperback
ISBN 10: 0979861306
ISBN 13: 9780979861307
Publisher: AM Press
Date Published: 2007
Bookseller catalogs: Archer Mayor;

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