The Marble Mask

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.