Set in the desolate Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Borderlines [is the second book in the popular series featuring] Archer Mayor's shrewd and shambling detective, Lieutenant Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro Police Department.  Dissatisfied with his life, and wanting some time to mull things over, Gunther wrangles a temporary assignment in the village of Gannet, where he spent long-gone summer with his Uncle Buster, a man who at seventy still runs the local garage.

But Gunther finds his boyhood town has changed.  Five years earlier, economically depressed Gannet sold half of its houses and land to back-to-nature cult called the Order.  Though secretive, its members have coexisted peacefully with the laconic locals--until the arrival of hot-tempered Bruce Wingate and his reticent wife, Ellie, searching for their daughter, whom they believe has disappeared into the cult's ranks.

Suddenly, rural life explodes into violence.  Within a week, five members of the Order die when their home is burned to the ground--and when a citizen is stabbed to death in an apparent act of savage retribution, the people of Gannet threaten to take justice into their own hands.  Torn between his allegiance to the past and his duty to the present, Gunther must set aside his defensive loyalty and move among friends and family not as an ally, but as a cop.*

*From the jacket of the 1990 edition