Peter Pan Must Die (Dave Gurney, No. 4)
A Novel
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4.1 • 21 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In John Verdon’s most sensationally twisty novel yet, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney brings his analytical brilliance to a shocking murder that couldn’t have been committed the way the police say it was.
The daunting task that confronts Gurney, once the NYPD’s top homicide cop: determining the guilt or innocence of a woman already convicted of shooting her charismatic politician husband -- who was felled by a rifle bullet to the brain while delivering the eulogy at his own mother’s funeral.
Peeling back the layers, Gurney quickly finds himself waging a dangerous battle of wits with a thoroughly corrupt investigator, a disturbingly cordial mob boss, a gorgeous young temptress, and a bizarre assassin whose child-like appearance has earned him the nickname Peter Pan.
Startling twists and turns occur in rapid-fire sequence, and soon Gurney is locked inside one of the darkest cases of his career – one in which multiple murders are merely the deceptive surface under which rests a scaffolding of pure evil. Beneath the tangle of poisonous lies, Gurney discovers that the truth is more shocking than anyone had imagined.
And the identity of the villain at the mystery’s center turns out to be the biggest shock of all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nero Award finalist Verdon combines a brilliant puzzle and psychological insight into his sleuth, Dave Gurney, in the stellar fourth novel featuring the retired NYPD homicide detective (after 2012's Let the Devil Sleep). Much to the dismay of Gurney's wife, he agrees to work on another case instead of relaxing at the couple's upstate New York property. Jack Hardwick, who lost his job with the state police after helping Gurney in the previous book, asks the detective to help overturn a murder conviction. Kay Spalter was convicted of shooting to death her husband, Carl, a gubernatorial candidate running on an anti-Mafia platform, at his mother's funeral, but some people think she was framed. Hardwick wants Gurney simply to identify irregularities in the investigation so as to make an appeal successful, but the only way Gurney knows how to do that is to find the truth. The plot is full of Verdon's usual challenges (e.g., it was apparently impossible for the murder to have been carried out), but the cleverness is surpassed by the probing analysis of what makes Gurney tick.
