Retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney is trying to readjust to life in the quiet Catskills of New York State with his wife Madeleine after recently coming out of retirement to solve a murder and almost getting killed in the process. Dave is feeling restless, but Madeleine is insistent he learn to enjoy their new life. When he gets a call from a former crony, Jack Hardwick teases Dave with a case that captures his imagination and lures him back into a life of investigation. Young rich girl Jillian Perry was murdered, decapitated, on her wedding day to older Scott Ashton, a pop-media superstar psychiatrist and the Mexican gardener, Hector Flores, is the prime suspect. Four months later, however, no one has seen hide nor hair of Hector and the next door neighbor’s wife, who was rumored to have been having an affair with Hector, has also vanished. Gurney can’t investigate officially nor does he have a PI license, but when Jillian’s mother offers to hire him to look into her daughter’s murder as a private citizen, he is too intrigued not to say yes. The more Dave looks into the case, the stranger, and more impossible, it seems to get. Nothing is as it seems and someone who is very smart is pulling the strings, but Dave is clever and begins looking at things in new ways and as new patterns emerge, he can hardly believe what he is seeing. Shut Your Eyes Tight is a thinking thriller, full of “what-if’s” and subtleties that even the most careful reader may miss. Gurney wrestles with many demons and is an empathetic character as he struggles to find his new place in his & Madeleine’s world. Using a seminar Gurney is teaching at the police academy on undercover work, Verdon neatly weaves in reasons for Gurney making the leaps and suppositions he does. Jillian’s murder is disturbing, as is the motive and what Gurney uncovers, but there is little graphic violence described to overshadow the thoughtfulness required to follow Gurney’s investigation and consider what may happen next.
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