Great new thriller

John Verdon is a first time author, but given the reviews for his book, Think of a Number, he has a promising career ahead. The Washington Post called it "…inventive and entertaining…The hard-edged characters and gritty plot recall Chandler's "mean streets," but the ornate puzzles laid before Verdon's detective might have challenged the "little grey cells" of Hercule Poirot…Verdon plays fair with the reader, crafting the puzzles with elaborate care and dangling the clues in plain sight. When he finally springs the solution to the "think of a number" conundrum, you'll never see it coming—but all the numbers add up."