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The Skeleton's Knee (1993)

by Archer Mayor
(#4 in Joe Gunther)

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.