When the frozen body of a murder victim--a smuggler from Quebec and the patriarch of a powerful crime syndicate--turns up on a Vermont mountain, Lieutenant Joe Gunther of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation uncovers links to a priceless mask sculpted by Michelangelo that mysteriously vanished during the World War II Italian campaign. 20,000 first printing. Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont, cop, is the head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI), a joint task force charged with statewide responsibility for major crimes. In The Marble Mask , the VBI's first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. Some of the more interesting minor characters in author Archer Mayor's long-running series about the amiable elder sleuth make return appearances here as Joe's teammates--like one-armed Willy, a former wife-beater who's now playing footsie with Sammie Martens, one of Joe's favorite colleagues. When the frozen stiff turns out to be a (formerly) big-time Canadian crime boss named Jean Deschamps, who disappeared after World War II, Joe and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Sûreté, and the local cops in Sherbrooke, where Deschamps's son Marcel is involved in a turf war with the Hell's Angels and a rival gang of thugs. Old secrets and intrigues come to light while an intricate plan to frame a dying man for a crime half a century old forms an interesting puzzle that's not fully revealed until the last couple of pages. Mayor excels at painting a picture of a time and place that's as authentic as maple syrup, and in Joe he's created a Cooperesque character who's almost as enigmatic as the mist-shrouded mountains of his beloved state. Skiers who've schussed down Stowe's fabled slopes will enjoy Mayor's recreation of the town in its bygone era as well as the description of its renaissance as a major tourist attraction today. Joe doesn't change much from book to book, but that's fine with Mayor's fans. He's a good cop, a quiet hero, a reliable guy, and his 11th appearance in this tightly woven mystery is cause for cheer. --Jane Adams Detective Joe Gunther has left the Brattleboro Police Department to become field commander of the newly formed Vermont Bureau of Investigation. The VBI's role is to serve as a major-crimes unit for the state's many small police forces, but the realpolitik of law enforcement means that the state police see the new guys as interlopers. Success on their first case, therefore, is crucial, but the case is a doozy. A 50-year-old corpse is found frozen stiff on top of a mountain in Stowe. The stiff is so stiff that the feet appear to have broken off the body when the corpse was dropped from an airplane. Gunther's team quickly identifies the body as a Quebec crime boss who disappeared in 1947, but Gunther suspects he's being led by the nose. Fans of this series may be briefly disappointed by Gunther's departure from Brattleboro, which Mayor evoked so vividly in the earlier novels. But the broader turf serves only to energize what was already an outstanding series. Thomas Gaughan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "...thoroughly entertaining...imaginatively conceived and executed with the polish Mayor has honed over the life of the series." -- Publishers Weekly, 9/4/00 CHAPTER ONE Joe. You still there? Talk to me, buddy." I didn't open my eyes. It was so dark I felt if I did, more light might fall out than enter, sapping what little energy I had left. I remembered having the same sensation once as a kid, when my brother Leo and I had hidden in one of our father's grain boxes in the barn, closed the cover over us, and shut out all light and air. Lack of oxygen hadn't been the issue, though-we were out of there, pale and laughing too loudly, long before suffocation became a threat. It was darkness that had defeated us-invasive, all-absorbing, reaching in through our wide-open eyes to extract whatever was keeping us alive. Squeezing my lids shut had been like hanging on to a cliff edge with my fingertips. Which paradoxically made me wonder if suffocation could be a problem here, entombed as I was. Certainly I felt sleepy, which I'd heard was one of the signs, but then that counted for cold, too, and God knows I was cold. "Joe? We need to know if you're still okay. Give us an indicator at least-hit the transmit button a couple of times if you don't feel like talking." I really didn't. I was talked out-talking to them, talking to myself. I wasn't even sure where the radio was anymore. I'd shoved it under my coat when I'd pulled my arms out of the sleeves to turn my parka into a thermal straightjacket and better preserve my body heat. Besides, assuming I could find it, I doubted my fingers could operate the damn thing. That was probably why they'd told me to just hit the transmit button-they were guessing I was almost gone. I thought about that for a moment, which was