May 3, 2010
The numbers game gets a murderous spin in Verdon’s deft, literate debut. Recently retired NYPD homicide detective Dave Gurney is an old warhorse much too easily led to water, in the view of his increasingly disenchanted wife, who insists it’s now me-time. But it surprises neither of them that Gurney snaps at the lure when a beleaguered friend sets before him a tasty, number-driven puzzle. Mark Mellery has been receiving mysterious mailings that terrify him because he’s convinced the author of them can somehow read his mind, and because the mailings threaten his death for crimes he can’t recall having committed. Nor is Mellery the only one, it soon become evident, as a particularly malignant serial killer buckles down to business. Ever the puzzle master, Gurney tracks and unravels each clue until—in an attenuated denouement that constitutes one of this thriller’s rare self-indulgences—he finally makes the numbers add up.