In Brattleboro, Vermont, a home invasion against a prominent Asian family by Asian gang members puts Joe Gunther on the trail of an underground railroad operation that carries drugs, illegal aliens and other contraband from Canada to Boston, New York and other US cities.

Lt. Joe Gunther is in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom investigating a minor embezzling case. It's a pleasant distraction, and a chance to reconnect with old friends, but when a house fire reveals itself to be arson, compounded by murder, Gunther can't help but investigate. Suddenly, he finds himself enmeshed in a web of animosity between put-upon townspeople, the state police, angry parents and members of a reclusive sect. Murder follows murder, yet no...

"An unidentified man is found face down in an abandoned quarry, strangled with a piano wire. The labels have been cut from his clothes, his facial features are Slavic in appearance, and his toes are tattooed with Russian letters. When no one reports any missing persons, and no police agency responds to a fingerprint check, it looks like a dead end for Joe Gunther and his team. But then why are the FBI and the CIA showing such an interest?"--Page 4...

A frozen body is found on top of Vermont's tallest mountain in middle of winter. Lost hiker or foul play? It's hard to say, until the marble-hard body is thawed out, revealing oddly old-fashioned clothes, an ice-pick wound to the heart, and a Canadian driver's license dating back 50 years.

In Brattleboro, Vermont, Lieutenant Joe Gunther juggles several cases, all of which turn out to be connected. There is the murder of a girl runaway, the disappearance of a local activist, the death of a homeless man, and the strangling of a woman due to die anyway.

"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,...

Vermont police detective Joe Gunther digs deep for clues that will help him nab a killer, after murder hits the slopes at a posh ski resort.