The skeleton's knee : [a Joe Gunther novel]
(Book)

"A hermit dies in the hospital of a bullet he received twenty years earlier. At his mountaintop home, a skeleton with a bullet hole and a metal knee is found buried in the yard. On the way to the medical examiner's office, the hearse comes under machine gun fire. A long-hidden crime is obviously very much on someone's mind - someone who would love to destroy what little evidence remains. The serial number on the metal knee takes Joe Gunther to Chicago, where he is snubbed by the big city cops, and confronted with some ancient and bloody history. When he returns to Vermont with newly discovered evidence, he's no longer alone. He's picked up a shadowy presence as eager as himself to unmask the person who buried the skeleton with the knee."-- Publisher description.