Title: Presumption Of Guilt

Author: Archer Mayor

A skeleton is found encased in a concrete slab at a recently decommissioned nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vermont–a discovery that solves a forty-year-old missing person case. but a body doesn’t end un buried in concrete by accident. Hoe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of investigation (VBI) are given the assignment because this very cold case has now been reclassified as murder and they’re the only ones with the resources and ability to investigate.

The victim was Hank Mitchell, and Gunther must chase down old rumors and speculations to try to find answers for the essential questions: Who benefited from his death and by making his body disappear? Could his death be tied somehow to New York City Mafia money that was being laundered through the construction project?

But what seems the coldest of cold cases roars back to life when one of the central figures in this mystery is shot to death right after speaking with Gunther. And when a young police officer–the son of VBI investigator Lester Spinney–is kidnapped, is that meant to be a warning to the VBI team to drop the case?

After all these many years, the truth behind the murder still has the power to kill, and it’s up to Gunther and his team to protect the innocent, track down the living, and finally put the dead to rest.