User:Nahikari.carazo/sandbox/John Verdon

John Verdon is a novelist. In 2010 Crown/Random House published his first mystery thriller, Think of a Number—the debut novel in the Dave Gurney detective series.

Biography
John Verdon's initial career was in the advertising industry in New York City, where he worked on the creative sides of several large agencies. After his retirement from advertising, he and his wife decided to leave the city and move to a rural area in the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

In his first pursuit after leaving the city he designed and built Shaker-style furniture—a career he pursued for the next ten years. He also became a fan of classic detective stories, in all their varieties from Conan Doyle to Ross Macdonald to Reginald Hill.

His wife, Naomi, inspired him to write his own mystery novel. Two years later he completed Think of a Number. Its subsequent success in the marketplace, as well as with critics, persuaded him to write a second novel, Shut Your Eyes Tight, featuring the same central characters. That was the beginning of a series of crime thrillers—also including Let the Devil Sleep and Peter Pan Must Die—featuring retired NYPD homicide detective, Dave Gurney. The books in the series have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

Criticism
''“If one read this novel with no knowledge of the writer’s background, one would guess that he is a retired policeman or prosecutor. It is quite hard to believe that Verdon has no personal knowledge of the bleak and challenging world that he writes about so expertly in this work."'' New York Journal of Books

“Verdon is masterly at keeping Gurney a step ahead of the reader.”  New York Times

Dave Gurney
John Verdon created his own main character, Dave Gurney. Dave Gurney is a retired homicide detective from the New York City Police Department. He grew up on City Island. He studied at Fordham Rose Hill in the Bronx. After a successful career of 25 years as a police officer, he moved to live with his wife, Madeleine, to a farmhouse of the nineteenth century in Delaware County, 8 km from a town called Walnut Crossing. He works as a professor of criminology at the university. During his time in the police he resolved successfully several cases. He was the most talented man of the department. His profession is as an intellectual challenge for him. He see the criminal as a enigma to be solved rather than as an adversary to overcome. Dave studies the facts, imagines the angles, jumps traps and draws logical stories that explain them. In "I know what you're thinking," an old acquaintance of Gurney receives a mesage inviting him to choose a random number. In the same envelope there is another smaller, where the sender hits the intended number. After receiving several anonymous, his friend is killed and Gurney is hired as a consultant by the prosecutor.