2011, Crown Publishers
509 pgs.
Goodreads Rating 3.88
My rating: I liked it a whole lot (4)
First sentence: "He stood in front of the mirror and smiled with deep satisfaction at his own smiling reflection."
Setting: Contemporary New York state, in the Catskills near Albany.
First impressions upon finishing: Another great, complicated mystery from John Verdon. It did seem a little extra long (509 pages), and the weird tension in Gurney's marriage is a little difficult to picture. High-level vocabulary, especially at the beginning kept me on my toes. I've definitely become a John Verdon/Dave Gurney fan.
Dave Gurney, retired NYC homicide detective, is pulled into his second "consultant" investigation since his retirement at age 48. This does not please his wife, Madeleine, who wants him to stay completely retired. However, he has an uncanny ability to sniff out the questions that need answering and putting pieces of weird, seemingly unsolvable puzzles together.
This weird, unsolvable puzzle begins with the murder of a brand-new wife, beautiful Jillian Perry, at her own wedding reception. The wedding was at her new husband, Scott Ashcroft's, lavish country estate. She went into a small cottage on the premises to encourage their gardener, Hector Flores, to attend the reception. When she didn't reappear her husband entered the cottage and discovered his decapitated wife sitting at a small table with her head staring back at her body.
The investigation takes Gurney back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth once again between his own home in Walnut Crossing to the site of the murder in
Tambury, into Manhattan, and to meetings with police and the DA in Albany.
Complicated, interesting, and thought-provoking. It took me a lot of 30-40 page sittings, but was very worth it. One word I can associate with this author: CLEVER!!
No comments:
Post a Comment