2014 Crown Publishers
442 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished 9/5/2014
Goodreads rating: 3.90
My rating: 4.5 Loved it
TPPL
Comtemporary upstate New York
1st sentence/s: (from prologue) "There was a time when he dreamt of being the head of a great nation. A nuclear power."
(from Ch. 1) "In the rural Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, August was an unstable month, lurching back and forth between the bright glories of July and the gray squalls of the long winter to come."
(from Ch. 1) "In the rural Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, August was an unstable month, lurching back and forth between the bright glories of July and the gray squalls of the long winter to come."
My comments: Ah, yes, another satisfying John Verdon mystery. I love his intricate plotlines and the way you really do need to keep guessing the whole way. I'm still unhappy with the relationship between Gurney and his wife, Madeleine. It's not like any relationship I can relate to.....and I guess it's because I don't really like her.....at all! I realized it's not a major part of the story, but it is a large minor part (ah, semantics!). This creepy killer reminds me of some of the characters that M. E. Kerr has written about in her fabulous YA stories a few years back - not at all "normal" or "average" in appearance. Which keeps me thinking about the evil in this guy - how much does odd appearance mold our personality?
Goodreads book summary:
The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband -- who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral.
Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.
Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking than anyone had imagined. And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all
The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband -- who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral.
Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.
Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking than anyone had imagined. And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all
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