Just Jennifer

Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon (Crown, July 2012)

Retired NYPD Detective Dave Gurney isn’t all that retired as he returns for his third case.  Gurney and his wife have move to upstate New York where the media dubbed Supercop can rest and the couple can try and live a normal life.  So far, that hasn’t happened as Dave has become a consultant on two cases, the last one that ended with Dave being shot and the resulting depression and over dependency on pain medications.  When a reporter calls and asks Dave to assist her daughter who is working on her graduate thesis, a television series based on the emotional trauma family members of the victims of a serial killer known as the Good Shepherd suffer every day; the Good Shepherd, who targeted people driving luxury black Mercedes sedans in Upstate New York was never caught, and Dave realizes that he has only been dormant all these years and will not be finished until he is caught.   Though it seems unlikely that a cop with Dave’s instincts and brooding temperament would get as involved with a reporter, especially when he learns that the television show is going to be more sensational than originally pitched, the plot is good and Dave’s different way of looking at the evidence helps point investigators in the right direction, though not soon enough to prevent more deaths.  Verdon’s plots are tightly constructed, his characters well developed, and though nothing may compare to his first novel Think of a Number, this is definitely one of the better detective series out there today.