T
he acclaimed Vermont crime novelist, Archer
Mayor, is a former detective, EMT, firefight-
er, and ski patroller. He is currently a death
investigator for Vermont’s Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner. Joshua Sherman recently interviewed Archer at
Old Mill Road Recording. Archer shared some wonderful
stories about his love of photography, how to write 30 novels
in 30 years, and why “Joe Gunther” is a great name.
Sherman: Archer, you were born in Mt. Kisco, NY, but
moved to Canada at age one. Why the move?
Above: The young writer (Archer) at work.
Bellow: Archer’s great aunt, the famous sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington.
48 VERMONT
VERMONT
Magazine
52
magazine
FALL 2019
Mayor: Well, the joke in the family was that my father was
so restless, we thought he had a criminal record. And
indeed, he would pull up stakes on a regular basis and
move. He was a businessman … one of these guys that got
off the train at 6:15 every evening with a case in hand and a
Fedora on his head… But my father was a bit of a
cranky guy. Call him a “nihilist capitalist”, if you will, so
occasionally, he would get up in front of the family table, and
he would say, “Never quit. Always get fired.” And we knew
it was time to move again. So, before I was 30 years old,
I’d lived in approximately 30 different places ... We moved
from the United States to Canada to South America, and to
various spots in Europe - all before I left at age 14.
Sherman: And how do you think living internationally in
those early years influenced you?
Mayor: They were the best education I ever got. And I got
a pretty good education, too. I would say that they taught
me a variety of things: to adapt quickly, to associate with
completely foreign and different people immediately, to be
very short on criticizing new things and new people and
new habits and cultures and languages … because YOU’RE
the foreigner, YOU’RE the outsider, and they were here
first. So - show a little respect and “shut up your mouth
and listen” and “pay attention and learn something”. That’s
the positive stuff. The less positive stuff is that you are
perpetually uprooted. You don’t belong anywhere. You
don’t have any friends you can maintain for any length of
time, because you’re going to move. You occasionally get
thrown into situations fraught with adversity, from which
you can’t easily escape, especially when you’re a youngster.
And those can have deleterious effects on your psyche at a
formative age. So, I suffered from all the slings and arrows -
as well as the good stuff … I formulated a process of interior
thinking. And you can well imagine, being a writer isn’t far
removed. So it was a natural segue for me. I started, funny
enough, taking photographs, but I realized that my
photography would never come to the level my writing has
since achieved. I was a good photographer, but I would
never have been an accomplished one. And I did the