Laurie Davis, the nineteen-year-old niece of Gunther’s long-time girlfriend Gail Zigman, is critically wounded when she attempts to rob a convenience store to get money for heroin. She is in a coma. Gail feels guilty about the incident because she had little contact with her niece. She tries to make sense of the situation by befriending another young woman caught up in the drug culture.

Lester Spinney has reason to believe that his teenage son David has been keeping dangerous company and may be experimenting with drugs. The more he investigates the more serious the problem appears.

Two recent murders in the Brattleboro, Vermont, community have increased the governor’s determination to shut down the rising heroin trade. One of the victims was the daughter of a major political contributor. Several law enforcement agencies, including Joe Gunther’s own unit, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, are combining efforts in a Heroin Task Force. The VBI is sometimes resented by other law enforcement agencies over jurisdictional disputes, but Gunther’s cautious approach through helpful contacts has eased the conflict.

VBI agent Sammie Martens initiates an undercover contact as Greta Novak. She poses as a drug dealer wannabe establishing a new territory. It is decided by the police agencies that Sammie’s undercover set-up as the supposed subordinate of Johnny Rivera, a Holyoke, Massachusetts drug kingpin, may be their best lever against the trade. They choose the code name Gatekeeper for the task force. Sammie and Manuel, another dealer Rivera pairs with Sammie, are set up in a drug house that’s been carefully wired for sound. Sammie easily slips into her persona as Greta and discovers unexpected depths to Manuel.

This is the14th Joe Gunther mystery. In a series by this point most of the interpersonal dynamics are well established and a novice reader, as I was, is a little left out of the loop. I was halfway through the book, for example, before I discovered that Sammie and Willy Kunkle, another VBI agent, have a physical relationship. The fractured narrative as the story jumps from one subplot to another with little connection between them is a larger fault. The subplots share a common theme – lives threatened by drugs – but the abrupt shifts between them and the frequent headhopping with multiple third-person points of view make for uneven pacing. The interagency organization and competition also gets too much attention and interrupts the story’s flow.

The best sections of the book are those that focus on Sammie Martens/Greta Novak. Sammie’s subplot starts later but becomes the dominant one. Her growing mixed feelings about Manuel give those segments a more realistic impression.

Long-time followers of the Joe Gunther series are most likely to want to pick this one up. Most readers will find it an acceptable police procedural mystery but no more.

--Lesley Dunlap