John Verdon: The Monday Interview

I read enough mystery and crime fiction series to last me a lifetime. Literally; the pace some of my favorite authors crank out books, coupled with the back catalogs of those I came to late, I could read nothing but for the rest of my life. So, it is with caution that I take on a new author. Getting hooked on a first book will force me to shoehorn a new series of books into a schedule that already lacks wiggle room.

It’s a good problem to have, however. Who isn’t always in the market for a good thriller? So, when this pitch hit my digital doorstop, I was intrigued enough to add to my list. Here’s the premise: An anonymous letter arrives in the mail, telling the recipient to “think of any number.” He does, thinking of 658. The letter continues: “Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope.” He does, and finds a number scrawled within: 658, along with a little poem: “What you took you will give, when you get what you gave. I know what you think, when you blink, where you’ve been, where you’ll be. You and I have a date, Mr. 658.” (For a sample of how puzzling this seems, try this little game from the publisher.)

The recipient wants to know how the sender could possibly have known, and what more he may know. So did I. It’s a pretty amazing hook, and one that drove me through a story with many twists and turns, chills and thrills.

The author is a newcomer. John Verdon is a retired advertising executive from New York who moved upstate  when he left the job. The idea of writing a novel turned into Think of a Number, which promises to be the first of many books about retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney. Like Verdon, Gurney has retired and moved upstate. He is drawn into the case when he gets a call from an old college classmate, Mark Mellery, the recipient of the letter.

It isn’t long before murder and mayhem become part of the mix, and Gurney realizes he is facing a very formidable opponent. The book is not without its faults. An interesting thread about Gurney finding post-retirement work altering criminal mug shots to create art is pursued enough to create tension in his marriage and then abandoned, and too much time is spent making sure the reader is aware that nearly every other law-enforcement person Gurney works with is a pain in the ass.

But these are the flaws of a first-time writer (and frankly, the flaws of an editor who needed to spill more red ink before the book went to the printer), and the core of the book – the plot, the devices of suspense and the main protagonist – all are strong and bode well for what promises to an interesting, inventive series.

Verdon is on a virtual book tour, and his stop here at Things I’d Rather Be Doing is one of the last. For more information about the tour and to see links to the other blog stops along the way, click here.

TIRBD: Advertising executive is a fairly common resume entry for successful authors. Is that vocation – essentially selling things to people – a particularly valuable training ground for fiction writers?

JV: It may be that experience in writing ads is helpful in a couple of ways. It focuses the writer more on the discipline of communication than on simple expression – on what a particular audience is actually hearing you say rather than on what you think you’re saying. It also gets you pretty familiar with and accepting of the editing process – for example, the benefits of removing unnecessary words. However, that being said, I think there’s a second dynamic at work. Sometimes people who want to write fiction go into advertising because it’s a way to make a living, and when they’re finally able to make a living via their first love, they emerge from that “temporary” ad career.

What came first: The premise of that first note asking Mellery to “think of a number,” or the character of Dave Gurney?

In my own imaginative process, plot devices always precede character development – but that’s simply a matter of sequence, not priority. I may think of an intriguing situation – say the number device in this book, 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 character become and the more the goals and feelings of the characters start to take over.

The troubled cop is a well-worn cliche in crime fiction, but you’ve turned that on its head by giving Gurney a stable, if troubled relationship with a woman who is a fleshed out character rather than simply a foil. Were you consciously trying to subvert that trope when creating Madeline and her relationship with Gurney?

Books that feature one central troubled character surrounded by two-dimensional foils bore me to death. They’re about as interesting to me as watching TV at the airport.  Think of a Number has a real married couple – equal partners – in the center of the story simply because I like it that way. It’s more interesting, more alive, more fun. If it subverts the common trope, all the better.

You’ve said that you didn’t have any genre or rules in mind when devising this story. When it became clear that this was going to become a series following Gurney’s character, did that necessitate any changes to the story or the character to make the transition to a second and third (and perhaps beyond) book more seamless?

I wrote the first draft of Think of a Number with no thoughts about a sequel or a series. That draft was somewhat bleaker and ended on a darker note than the final version. The relationship between Madeleine and Dave was more contentious, less hopeful. My agent and later my editor nudged me the direction of making the characters warmer and more inviting. The change made them more viable as an ongoing couple by creating room for optimism and growth.

You and your wife moved after your retirement to upstate New York, just as Gurney and his wife do. Were you discovering things as Gurney discovers them in the story, and if so, did this help you to keep him grounded geographically as he dealt with the challenges of the case?

Basically, the answer is yes. The fact that the couple in the book moved to the same part of the world that my wife and I did gave me easy access to the details and overall impact of the environment, physically and emotionally – much as growing up in the Bronx helped me with Gurney’s visit to one of the crime scenes later in the book. No research necessary.

Some awfully high-profile writers have blurbed your book. How do you feel about becoming a part of that fraternity and what has that meant to you as a newcomer?

The generous blurbs and their famous sources staggered me. I never expected anything remotely like that. It is a very strange thing to have read a particular author for many years, to have worshipfully devoured each new book, to have been in awe at the talent on display… and then to have that very same author welcome you to the club! It really does leave me at a loss for words.

What is the most random thing that has happened to you that made you think that there were forces greater than chance or coincidence at play?

Everything in the publication process of Think of a Number has been weirdly wonderful. I don’t have to tell you that this is a business where an awful lot can go wrong, where the water is full of reefs and torpedoes. However, the happy fact is that from the very moment that Molly Friedrich (my agent) brought this book to Rick Horgan (my editor), everything has proceeded with a degree of smoothness and success that I am told is almost unheard of. So much good stuff: the amazing blurbs and rave reviews, the bidding wars for foreign publication rights, the book’s appearance on so many “recommended summer reading” lists, and now the latest news –one week after its publication in Spain, it’s on the bestseller lists there. And Spanish is just one of the 19 languages in which it’s scheduled to be published. It’s been one good thing after another – one better thing after another. Quite astonishing!