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A Novel
by John Verdon
The most decorated homicide detective in NYPD history, Dave Gurney, is still trying to adjust to his life of quasi-retirement in upstate New York when a young woman who is producing a documentary on a notorious murder spree seeks his counsel. Soon after, Gurney begins feeling threatened: a razor-sharp hunting arrow lands in his yard, and he narrowly escapes serious injury in a booby-trapped basement. As things grow more bizarre, he finds himself reexamining the case of The Good Shepherd, which ten years before involved a series of roadside shootings and a rage-against-the-rich manifesto. The killings ceased, and a cult of analysis grew up around the case with a consensus opinion that no one would dream of challenging - no one, that is, but Dave Gurney.
Mocked even by some who'd been his supporters in previous investigations, Dave realizes that the killer is too clever to ever be found. The only gambit that may make sense is also the most dangerous - to make himself a target and get the killer to come to him.
To survive, Gurney must rely on three allies: his beloved wife Madeleine, impressively intuitive and a beacon of light in the gathering darkness; his de-facto investigative "partner" Jack Hardwick, always ready to spit in authority's face but wily when it counts; and his son Kyle, who has come back into Gurney's life with surprising force, love and loyalty.
Displaying all the hallmarks for which the Dave Gurney series is lauded - well-etched characters, deft black humor, and ingenious deduction that ends in a climactic showdown - Let the Devil Sleep is something more: a reminder of the power of self-belief in a world that contains too little of it.
"Starred Review. The tension is palpable on virtually every page of a story that perfectly balances the protagonist's complex inner life with an elaborately constructed puzzle." - Publishers Weekly
"A good hunter-hunted story but not up to Verdon's previous work." - Booklist
"Endless allusions to Dave's brilliance can't obscure the fact that the colorless killer's plot is based on a cliché so well-established in the genre that experienced readers, spotting it long before the tortured genius, will feel pretty doggoned clever themselves." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Let the Devil Sleep 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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