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Archer Mayor is the author of the Vermont-based crime fiction series featuring Detective Joe Gunther. He is the 2004 winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association Award for Best Fiction—the first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. Before turning his hand to fiction, Mayor wrote history books, the most notable of which was Southern Timberman: The Legacy of William Buchanan.
Mayor continues to work as a death investigator for Vermont's Chief Medical Examiner, a Deputy Sheriff for Windham County, VT, an investigator for the Windham County State’s Attorney’s office, the publisher of his own backlist, a travel writer for AAA, and he travels the Northeast giving speeches and conducting workshops. He also has 25 years experience as a volunteer firefighter/EMT.
From the author's website
Archer Mayor's website
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PW: What's your background?
AM: I'm a global bum. I've lived all over the world, in 30 to 40 places. My
mother is Argentine, my father was born outside Gloucester, Mass. My work
background is nothing if not chaotically peripatetic—journalism, editing,
historical writing. What sew it all together are the twin engines that fuel me
as a writer—ignorance and curiosity. I never write about what I know, but what
I want to find out about.
PW: Why do you write mysteries?
AM: I wanted to make a living as a writer and pragmatically if there was a
chance to do so—and statistically there isn't—mysteries were a viable market
then [the 1980s]. Mysteries were no longer about good or bad guys and car
chases, they were about human beings who happen to be good or bad guys, and what
they do. I don't like pure puzzle mysteries. I like mysteries about
three-dimensional human beings who interact. When we can't make sense of the
real world, we read a form of literature that's the same thing, but with a
beginning, middle and end where the good guys win. It helps make reality more
understandable.
PW: How much research do you do?
AM: A lot. I have a habit that continues to this day of ...
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Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature.
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