John Verdon | |
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Born | United States of America | January 1, 1942
Occupation | Novelist |
Language | English |
Genre | Thriller, Adventure, Mystery, Detective |
Notable works | Think of a Number |
Spouse | Naomi |
Website | |
www |
John P. Verdon is an American novelist. In 2010, Crown/Random House published his first mystery thriller, Think of a Number , the debut novel in the Dave Gurney detective series.
Verdon is a graduate of Regis High School in New York City and Fordham University. His initial career was in the advertising industry in New York City, where he worked on the creative sides of several large agencies. After his retirement from advertising, he and his wife decided to leave the city and move to a rural area in the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains. [1]
In his first pursuit after leaving the city he designed and built Shaker-style furniture—a career he pursued for the next ten years. He also became a fan of classic detective stories, in all their varieties from Arthur Conan Doyle to Ross Macdonald to Reginald Hill.
His wife, Naomi, inspired him to write his own mystery novel. Two years later he completed Think of a Number. Its subsequent success in the marketplace, as well as with critics, persuaded him to write a second novel, Shut Your Eyes Tight, featuring the same central characters. That was the beginning of a series of crime thrillers featuring retired NYPD homicide detective, Dave Gurney. The books in the series have been translated into more than two dozen languages. [2]
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
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Think of a Number is the debut novel of John Verdon published in 2010.
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