My office was directly opposite. It was a cubicle really, eight feet by eight, with a ten-foot ceiling that always made me want to tip the room over so I’d have more room and more heat.

Set in Vermont in the winter, Open Season is the first in a series of police novels starring Joe Gunther, a detective in the town of Brattleboro. This book goes back to the ʼ90s (Joe is a Korean war veteran; you don’t run into many of those in stories anymore), and I have some reason to believe that author Archer Mayor has moved it in a politically correct direction since then. So I may be unhappy with later books, but I’m likely to give the series another chance, because I enjoyed this one quite a lot.

As the story begins, Joe is called to a sort of a murder scene – a local man, known to be very kind and tenderhearted, has broken into an old woman’s house and been killed by her with a shotgun. Soon other local people become the victims of attacks, and it’s discovered that they all have something in common. They were all on the jury that convicted a black man of killing a white woman in a famous local murder case. Joe has no choice but to re-open that case, quickly learning that it was shoddily investigated. So it becomes a double investigation, trying to find the real murderer while trying to stop an avenger who is no sweetheart himself.

One thing I particularly liked about Joe Gunther was an element of realism that rarely appears in fictional detectives. Having been injured in an accident, Joe is told by a doctor to stay in bed for a couple days – and he actually stays in bed! How many times have you seen that happen in a mystery?

Mild cautions for language and adult themes. Recommended.