The Skeleton's Knee — Archer Mayor

A SLOW DEATH

Vermont hermit Abraham Fuller kept mum on his gunshot wound. When it finally causes a fatal aneurysm some twenty years later, Detective Joe Gunther decides to investigate--and, for the first time, must leave his rustic Brattleboro beat.

The trouble starts in Fuller's garden where Gunther's crew digs up an artificial knee joint... attached to a very real human skeleton. Worse yet, the victim had been murdered. When a sniper machine-guns the hearse bringing the skeleton to the morgue, Gunther's first step is clear: find the manufacturer of the steel knee. It will mean trading Vermont for Chicago, where big city cops snub small-town gumshoes, too many people are hiding dark pasts,.and a deadly trail could lead to a fresh new corpse--Gunther's own.