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John Verdon
Born	(1942-01-01) January 1, 1942 United States of America
Occupation	Novelist
Language	English
Nationality	American
Genre	Thriller, adventure, mystery, detective
Notable works	Think of a Number Shut you Eyes Tight Let the Devil Sleep Peter Pan must Die '
Website
/http://www.johnverdon.net/

John Verdon

John Verdon was born at 1942 in the United states. at 1942is a writer.and his wife, like Dave and Madeleine Gurney (the main characters of his first series book; Think of a Number) decided to left their hectic jobs and move to someplace completely different — a place of pastoral peace and beauty. We chose the western foothill region of the Catskill Mountains. To be honest, the area is not without its blemishes. The widely scattered villages are a bit run-down at the heels. Few of the picturesque old barns and silos still signify working farms. And the lack of industry forces many young people to pursue their careers elsewhere. However, this hushed landscape of wooded hills and green valleys, of ponds and streams and cherry copses, of eagles and foxes and bears, seems to our own eyes and ears and hearts one of the loveliest places on earth.

Early Life

As far back as I can remember, I wanted be somewhere else, have something else and perhaps even be someone else. There was always a set of circumstances on the far horizon that I yearned for. The present was a place to escape from. Going away to college didn’t help. Working as a stunt man in a theme park didn’t help. Devoting myself obsessively to martial arts didn’t help. Sports cars and motorcycles didn’t help. I wanted to be a writer, but I also wanted to make a living. So I became an advertising writer. I pursued that career from the alcoholic sixties to the workaholic nineties, eventually pursuing promotions into a job that had very little to do with anything I was good at. I left advertising to do something completely different — still chasing that “something” on the far horizon. I studied woodworking and started building Shaker-style furniture, an occupation I immersed myself in for the next ten years. Along the way I also got a commercial pilot’s license, as an alternate route to the horizon, but that’s another story. When my wife left her teaching job in New York City, we moved to the country — to a beautiful part of the western Catskill Mountains. And then, for the first time in my life, I stopped wanting to be somewhere else. Being here felt wonderful. I finally stopped looking into the future for my magic kingdom. The sweet, peaceful world my wife and I found here was what we’d both been dreaming of. After we made the move, I began reading a lot more — mostly mysteries. I discovered not only that I truly loved classic detective stories — in all their varieties from Conan Doyle to Ross Macdonald to Reginald Hill — but that I was fascinated by the form itself, the mechanics of constructing the hidden crime and gradually exposing it. I was talking about this process one day to my wife, Naomi, when she made a simple suggestion: Why don’t you write a mystery novel of your own? With some misgivings and considerable fear of failure, I decided to try it. The result, two years later, was Think of a Number. Its subsequent success in the marketplace, as well as with critics, astounded me. My agent and my publisher urged me to write a second novel featuring the same central characters. The result of their encouragement was Shut Your Eyes Tight, which became another international bestseller, translated into more than 20 languages. I continue to be amazed and delighted. The third novel in the Dave Gurney series, Let the Devil Sleep, was published in July. And I’ve already started making notes for a fourth. It’s all very interesting. A wonderful life. Here and now. Our children from our former marriages are good people — honest, humorous, smart and successful. Our grandchildren are all that grandchildren are supposed to be. My wife and I are happy. Grateful for the lives we’ve been given. Grateful to have each other.

Writing Career

Living is about discovery — moving from our original view of something, through a process of conflict and enlightenment, to a clearer view. It’s about figuring out what’s really going on, separating truth from illusion. It’s about what detectives do in the stories I like best. Good detective stories are ultimately about real life. They’re about us. They are illuminating magnifications of the learning we engage in every day. I’ve always felt that the most satisfying novels are those that mirror life’s dangers and tragedies clearly — the risks we take, the painful collisions, the frightening unknowns, the hidden evils that enter every life — and provide reasonable resolutions. Mystery stories mirror our mental processes of data-discovery and dot-connecting. Our physical and emotional environments contain hidden areas that we have a natural urge to probe. The detective in a mystery novel reflects our natural curiosity. In fact, the mystery novel structure itself seems to me to be a grand metaphor for the way our brains work. Mystery novels mirror the complexity of relationships. We all have secrets, and none of us is completely truthful. Yet we want to know the truth about others. We want others to be transparent, yet fear that we ourselves may be too transparent. We expect others to trust us in ways we do not trust them. Unconsciously I make irrational distinctions between my motives and yours. If I speed past you on the highway, it is excusable because of my driving skill or my need to arrive somewhere at a particular time. If you speed past me, it is because you are a reckless fool. My questionable behavior arises from the pressure of my circumstances, while your questionable behavior arises from a personal flaw. It would seem that one of the cornerstones of self-deception is the self-protective creation of false differences.

The cost of deception is tremendous. We become what we hate. (Don’t we all hate liars?) Moreover, our own secrets and lies isolate us. And the byproducts of isolation are anxiety, anger, resentment, and depression. Secrets and lies arise from a desperate attachment to goals. From desperate desire. And desperate desire is the parent of deception. We lie for more love, more sex, more security, more freedom, more control, and more power. We lie whenever the net benefit to be obtained exceeds, consciously or unconsciously, the value of our integrity. We also have an appetite for believing certain lies because they provide explanations that are less threatening to us than alternative explanations. Perhaps the greatest cost of believing lies is that we lose contact with reality and are deprived of options for solving problems. Some ironies surrounding deception: It is a solution that creates greater problems. I lie for security, and I am made less secure. I lie for acceptance, but it is a fictional character who has been accepted, and I am more isolated. I lie to avoid pain, but I create the pain of guilt and fear. I lie to avoid criticism by others, and I end up thinking less of myself. I lie to find a desirable place in the world, and I find myself among strangers. I lie for closeness, and I create distance. I lie to control my external environment, and I create internal chaos. I lie to preserve the structure of a relationship, and I poison its soul and extinguish its light. I lie to have more, and I end up being less. The structure of the mystery novel offers a simple, powerful way to explore the tragedies produced by desperate desire. This structure involves the development of two stories — the story of the criminal endeavor, which at the outset is generally hidden from view, and the story of its discovery and exposure by the detective. I often visualize it as an archeological process — the workings of the hidden city on the one hand, the painstaking process of excavation on the other. Another image that works for me divides the two sides of the novel into foreground and background. In the background is the criminal endeavor, the deception, the mystery, the hidden city. In the foreground is the exploratory effort of the detective — conducted in the context of his daily life, relationships, and conflicts. I believe that one of the key elements that determines how we feel about a mystery novel is the nature of the relationship between foreground and background — specifically, the ways in which the two stories echo, contrast, and intersect with each other. My stories are not simply about the architecture and inhabitants of the hidden city or about the investigative activities and life of the detective, but also about the areas of resonance between background and foreground. Issues of empathy, guilt, parental responsibility, the impact of false narratives — these are embedded in both the foreground and background of my books, and the resonance between the life of the hidden city and the life of the excavator constitutes the final “message” of each story. One last point in favor of my favorite genre: Detective stories are essentially moral in their orientation — not just because the good guy wins, but because the structure of the form tends to value objectivity above convenience and truth above personal gain.

Bibliography

• Think of a Number (2010)
• Shut Your Eyes Tight (2011)
• Let the Devil Sleep (2012)
• Peter Pan Must Die (2014)

Criticism

“If one read this novel with no knowledge of the writer’s background, one would guess that he is a retired policeman or prosecutor. It is quite hard to believe that Verdon has no personal knowledge of the bleak and challenging world that he writes about so expertly in this work." New York Journal of Books