Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon

Shut your eyes tight...I'm going to give you a big surprise...
Every murderer leaves a trace.  Except what if one day they don't?

John Verdon's second thriller is Shut Your Eyes Tight.  It follows last year's debut of Think of a Number, which I reviewed here.  I was very excited to get the opportunity to return once again to upstate New York and visit with retired NYPD Detective Dave Gurney and his enigmatic wife, Madeleine.  Shut Your Eyes Tight is a hefty book, 528 pages in all.  Maybe a little long I thought at first.  But...no, it was the right amount of pages for me.  I dug in and really became caught up in the story.  Here it is:

Dave Gurney, a highly decorated NYPD homicide detective has retired from police work and moved with his wife, Madeleine, to a country home in upstate New York.  Madeleine wants them to spend time together, to enjoy a simple life and take in the beauty of their surroundings.  This couple has endured some very hard times and Dave is a driven cop, even in retirement.  Last year, he helped out with a serious case that almost got him killed.  And now, Madeleine is not pleased when her husband gets a call from a former partner, Jack Hardwick.  He wants Dave to take a look at a case that has stymied the state police for several months, a murder of a bride by decapitation.  The presumed murderer is a gardener that worked for the groom, but there are some very odd aspects to the crime and the case has bogged down with no progress being made for some time.  Would Dave consider going over some of the files, as a consultant paid by the victim's mother, a wealthy socialite?  Much to the chagrin of his wife, Dave is intrigued and says yes.  And so it begins.

I shared in my review last year that I find the Gurneys a very interesting couple - both of them.  Dave is very introspective and seems to lose track of things on a routine basis as he retreats into his mind to gain order in his world.  He's brilliant at detection, but he doesn't share his musings with his wife and so Madeleine is often shut out.  I kept being reminded of Sherlock Holmes and Dave's friend, Jack, even refers to him as Sherlock, mostly mockingly, on several occasions.  Dave teaches a class at the state police academy on undercover work and he seems very adept at donning a new identity.  It makes the reader wonder how much we really know of him, even though the story is told mostly through his eyes.

 

Madeleine is highly intelligent as well and I hoped that we would get to know her a bit better in this book.  I think we did  - sort of.  She's difficult for her husband to read and often seems exasperated with his absentmindedness.  Sometimes though, she seems purposefully vague, almost testing him.  Her comments regarding his cases are very astute though and Dave would do well to pay a bit more attention to them, in my opinion.  Madeleine is still a bit of a puzzle to me.  Again, I hope for more layers to peel off her personality in future books.

The mystery itself was interesting, but I did guess the solution pretty early on.  I enjoyed watching Dave work through things and didn't mind his constant coffee drinking and preoccupation with the question of fertilizing the asparagus fern.  Some fairly gritty crimes were represented here and also there were female sexual predators, not a common theme up to now.  There was a pack of coyotes that appeared over and over, stalking and howling.  I saw them as a sort of metaphor for some of the characters.  All in all, I was happy with Shut Your Eyes Tight.  I'm not sure where the author will go with Dave and Madeleine Gurney.  It would be nice to get to know Dave's son, Kyle, a law student, a little better.  He is only referred to a couple of times.  Dave has some real issues with being a dad as well as being a husband.  Hopefully, we'll get to ride along as our flawed hero sorts through more of his issues.  A good second effort by John Verdon.  I hope there are more to come.

Thanks to Lisa at TLC Book Tours for asking me to take a part in this blog tour.  I am very appreciative.  You can find more reviews here.