The Second Mouse

by: Archer Mayor

Published by: Mysterious Press (Hachette Book Group)

Reviewed by Mark M. Owen, Ph.D.

Archer Mayor's The Second Mouse is a serviceable whodunit. It has the requisite corpse to start the mystery rolling, and the novel has a motivated protagonist in Joe Gunther. He's solved hard cases in the past and is a legend among local cops. They bring him in when the going gets tough. The book also has some colorful bad guys that help draw you in and keep you guessing until the end.

What Mayor does best is give the reader that intimate small-town feeling. Mayor's latest New England mystery takes place in Vermont in the summer. Nothing at the initial scene points to the true cause of death. Gunther follows one thin lead after another and is led from one interesting person to another. Everyone who's anyone seems to know someone, as it should be in a small town, and people provide most of the clues. Gunther is directed and misdirected towards possible threads that can unravel the tapestry of the mystery.

The Second Mouse is not a linear mystery, meaning one chapter ends and it's connected to the next chapter, as employed by many mystery books. Mayor develops a parallel plot detailing the escapades of three criminals, and it's not clear until late in the book how they are tied into the main story.

Armchair Interviews says: Readers looking for a standard mystery novel don't need to look much farther than Mayor. He has the formula down to a science.