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Published Jul 2016
375 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Wolf Lake is the page-turning new work by a writer hailed by the New York Times as "masterly" - and it furthers the adventures of Dave Gurney, a detective reviewers have compared to Sherlock Holmes.
Could a nightmare be used as a murder weapon? That's the provocative question confronting Gurney in the thrilling new installment in this series of international bestsellers.
The former NYPD star homicide detective is called upon to solve a baffling puzzle: Four people who live in different parts of the country and who seem to have little in common, report having had the same dream - a terrifying nightmare involving a bloody dagger with a carved wolf's head on the handle. All four are subsequently found with their wrists cut - apparent suicides - and the weapon used in each case was a wolf's head dagger.
Police zero in quickly on Richard Hammond, a controversial psychologist who conducts hypnotherapy sessions at a spooky old Adirondack inn called Wolf Lake Lodge. It seems that each of the victims had gone there to meet with Hammond shortly before turning up dead.
Troubled by odd holes in the official approach to the case, Gurney begins his own investigation - an action that puts him in the crosshairs of not only an icy murderer and the local police but the darkest corner of the federal government. As ruthless as the blizzard trapping him in the sinister eeriness of Wolf Lake, Gurney's enemies set out to keep him from the truth at any cost - including an all-out assault on the sanity of his beloved wife Madeleine.
With his emotional resources strained to the breaking point, Gurney must throw himself into a deadly battle of wits with the most frightening opponent he has ever faced.
"Starred Review. Verdon couples the continued nuanced exploration of Dave and Madeleine's relationship with one of his most sophisticated solutions yet." - Publishers Weekly
"The case is a bit cluttered, Gurney's drawn-out ratiocinations slow the pace at the end, and Verdon's straightforward prose doesn't effectively evoke the tale's dark setting. Still, the notion of shared nightmares holds the reader start to finish." - Kirkus
This information about Wolf Lake was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Verdon is the author of the Dave Gurney series of thrillers, international bestsellers published in more than two dozen languages: Think of a Number, Shut Your Eyes Tight, Let the Devil Sleep, Peter Pan Must Die, and Wolf Lake. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, Verdon had two previous careers: as an advertising creative director and a custom furniture maker. He currently lives with his wife, Naomi, in the rural mountains of upstate New York -raising chickens, tending the garden, mowing the fields, and devising the intricate plots of the Gurney novels.
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