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Synopsis

It begins with a letter . . . The letter contains a request - think of a number, any number - and a sealed envelope. Inside the envelope is that number.

When Dave Gurney, retired NYPD homicide detective, is contacted by an old college acquaintance about some startling letters he's been receiving, it is at first little more than a diverting but sinister puzzle. Until the acquaintance is brutally killed.

Suddenly Gurney finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation that makes no sense. The killer seems to have known his victim intimately. How else was he able to predict his victim's thoughts, even his actions? How did he know his darkest secrets?

The killer is smart and he is playing with the police. Gurney needs to be smarter if he's going to catch him, but this seems only to be the beginning. And the killer alone knows where it will end.

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Interview

John Verdon tells Penguin.co.uk his top three writing tips and talks about his source of inspiration...
 
What was the first crime novel you ever read? 

The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Who is your favourite author?

 I can’t answer that.  At any given moment it could range anywhere from  Shakespeare to Dickens to Joyce to Conan Doyle to Reginald Hill. 

What made you decide to become a writer?

For a class assignment at the age of fifteen I wrote a poem that my teacher praised at  great length.  He told me that writing was something I should keep doing, and his encouragement had a great emotional impact on me.  It was the first time in my life I felt that there might be a career for which I was especially suited.  When it came time years later to get married and get a job, however, the advertising industry seemed to offer the only route to earning a reasonable living as writer.  So I did that for 32 years in New York City.  I never went back to poetry, but when I retired from Madison Avenue I did decide to try my hand at writing a crime novel.  Think of a Number was the result of that effort. 

Where do you write?

It depends on what you mean by “write”.  Different parts of the process occur in different places.  Ideas most often come to me while I’m driving.  I carry index cards and pens in my car, so I can pull over and jot things down.  The next stage consists of scribbling rough drafts of scenes on a yellow pad -- and that most frequently happens at the kitchen table.  I type more finished material on my computer at my desk in the den.  
 
What do you do when you’re not writing?

My wife and I live on 95 acres on the top of a mountain in a very rural area -- not unlike Dave and Madeleine Gurney in Think of a Number -- and there are always flowers or shrubs to be planted or pruned, fields to be mowed, trails to be maintained, a garden to be watered and weeded, snow to be plowed, logs to be split, books to be read.  We’re remarkably fortunate people.  All of these things are things we love to do.  One thing we don’t do is watch television.  When we moved here we decided not to get one, and we’ve never regretted that decision.        
 
Where do you get your ideas?

The embarrassing truth is, I have a deep streak of paranoia.  It’s a curse and a blessing.  A curse because I can easily scare the hell out of myself.  A blessing because I have no trouble coming up with really disturbing plot possibilities.  There’s a part of my brain that seems dedicated to coming up with things to be afraid of.  When an idea gives me a little tingle of gooseflesh, I know it has possibilities.

When you begin – do you already know the end?

No. In my own imaginative process, things come to me in bits and pieces.  I may think of an intriguing situation -- say the numerical baffler in Think of a Number, or the inexplicable footprints in the snow -- and that leads me into imagining what sort of larger story that situation could be part of.  Imagining that story then starts to bring to life the kind of people who would inhabit that world and do those things, what sort of people they’d come into conflict with, what those people might look and sound like, and so forth.  The further I get into that process, the more important the elements of personality become and the more the goals and feelings of the characters start to take over. The characters think, act, collide.  The characters determine the ending.
 
Which crime novel do you wish you’d written?

Reginald Hill’s Arms and the Women.  It’s the sort of novel that the term tour de force was invented for.  To me, it’s his most complex, elegant, and entertaining book.  And his other novels set the bar for those qualities pretty high.
 
What are you proudest of?

 My three children.  They are all good, honest, funny, smart people. 

Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?

 I’d like to discover a way to eat more ice cream without having to buy larger pants. 
 
What makes you angry?

 Buying larger pants.

 Please give your top three crime writing tips. 

First find the voice of a character, then find the words in the voice. Put conflict in every scene, even when there’s only one character present.  Don’t pay much attention to my other two tips.  So far I’ve only had one novel published, so who am I to be handing out tips?

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