White River Burning

April 1, 2018

In Verdon's sixth series outing (after Wolf Lake) featuring retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney, the upstate New York town of White River is reeling after a police shooting claims the life of an unarmed black man. During resulting protests, a police officer is murdered and the obvious suspect is a member of the Black Defense Alliance (BDA). An anxious district attorney brings a reluctant Gurney into the investigation, which has pit a law-and-order police chief and his department against the BDA. A plot line that includes motives of hate, ambition, justice, and power also addresses many issues of social concern today: dystopian media outlets, police corruption, a racial divide, and an economically distressed town doing its best to survive. Characters, especially that of Dave Gurney, are believable, if a bit static, and compelling. And while the story involves police corruption, it also includes several good, honest police officers who are disturbed by what is happening and will work to stop it. VERDICT Verdon's gripping, fast-paced police procedural will appeal to crime fiction readers with an interest in current events who enjoy David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, and Carrie Smith.--George Lichman, Rocky River, OH

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Starred review from May 7, 2018
In Verdon’s outstanding sixth outing for ex-NYPD homicide detective Dave Gurney (after 2016’s Wolf Lake), White River, N.Y., cop John Steele, who is white, is killed by a sniper on the first anniversary of the controversial shooting of Laxton Jones, a black motorist. Jones was shot by a white police officer, who later claimed self-defense and was cleared of wrongdoing by the authorities. Jones’s death prompted the creation of the Black Defense Alliance, which alleged that he was probing rampant corruption in the White River PD and was deliberately gunned down. Steele was shot while attempting to maintain order at a demonstration organized by the BDA, and the chief of police believes the shooting was payback for Jones’s. Brought in by the district attorney to consult on the case, Gurney has his doubts after Steele’s widow shares that shortly before her husband’s murder, he received a text message warning that he would be shot and the BDA would be blamed. The twisty plot builds up to a logical and satisfying reveal. Verdon expertly combines a baffling whodunit with thoughtfully drawn characters in this timely examination of racial tensions. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency.

May 1, 2018
Once again, the bucolic upstate retirement of NYPD homicide ace Dave Gurney is disrupted by a grisly murder spree.In the sixth installment of this series of mystery-thrillers by ex-adman Verdon (Wolf Lake, 2016, etc.), the specter of racial tension comes to roost near the woodsy farmhouse in Walnut Crossing, New York, that Gurney and his wife call home. A petty-minded district attorney with big-ticket ambitions wants Gurney to look into the shooting death of a police officer in the nearby town of White River. Because the officer was white and the incident took place at a demonstration marking the one-year anniversary of a police shooting of an unarmed black motorist, Gurney must deploy all his urbane discretion, implacable concentration, and innate logic to work his way through thickets of bad faith and ill will. Much of the latter comes from White River's belligerent police chief, who is eager to pin the murder of his patrolman on two leaders of the demonstration's organizer, the Black Defense Alliance. But that scenario sinks when those two suspects are found naked, branded, and beaten to death on a local playground. From that point forward, nothing remains certain in Gurney's inquiry as more bodies pile up, each of them disposed more brutally--and diabolically. With the determination and craftiness that in his previous life won him the "supercop" designation, Gurney methodically tries to connect each murder to the other. All he can count on for reliable backup are cool-headed White River policeman Mark Torres and short-fused but bombastically-effective private investigator Jack Hardwick, a holdover from previous novels. And there's his forbearing wife, Madeleine, who at one point deep into the investigation observes of her husband: "You're good at assembling bits of information and seeing a pattern in them. But I think sometimes you enjoy the intellectual process so much you don't like to rush it." That could also be said of Gurney's creator, whose systematic approach to his material may tempt his readers to feel the need to push things along at times.It's easy to see why this series is so popular, blending as it does the hard-boiled social observations of noir fiction with the inscrutable pleasures of classic "whodunit" puzzle-solving.

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