Think of a Number的最大优点是精雕细琢的语言，这一点我个人认为在现代欧美文学中已经不常见了。作者为读者描述了美国东北部山区的景色，那种简约却厚重的美，美得让人屏息静气；作者为读者描述了主人公内心的所感所想，真实得句句都触动着读者的心；作者还在文字间插述了一些犯罪心理学的内容，将故事深入到人文关怀的层面上。如果从认知的角度来看，文学语言的作用即是将作者的所见所感诉诸于刻意挑选的文字，让读者阅读后见作者所见，感作者所感。这一点，John Verdon很成功。刚开始阅读时，我对作者是一万分的惋惜——他有高超的语言驾驭能力，还有对社会对人类的深刻思考，为什么偏偏要拿如此俗不可耐的题材创作！（实在抱谦，我对此类小说抱有不可饶恕的偏见）
最后补一句，这本书和盗梦空间根本没有可比性，完全是南辕北辙的两码事。Think of a Number没有那种华丽丽的逻辑推理过程，也没有宏大惊人的场面。它只是一个以普通的情感、普通的生活和出乎意料的悬疑机关来吸引读者的故事。建议阅读时，请把任何与盗梦空间有关的内容排除出脑海。
列几段文字供大家欣赏，表达我希望弥补自己罪过的诚心。
先把诗歌都摘出来，不要因为我而影响Verdon的书。
How many bright angels
can dance on a pin?
How many hopes drown in
a bottle of gin?
Did the thought ever come
that your glass was a gun
and one day you’d wonder
God what have I done?
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,
Mister Six Fifty Eight.
I do what I’ve done
not for money or fun
but for debts to be paid,
amends to be made.
For blood that’s as red
as a painted rose.
So every man knows
he reaps what he sows.
I ran through the snow.
Fool, look high and low.
Ask where did I go.
You scum of the earth,
here witness my birth:
revenge is reborn
for children who mourn,
for all the forlorn.
These are some of my favorite things:
the magic change a bullet brings,
the blood that spurts out on the floor
until there isn’t any more,
their eyes for an eye, their teeth for a tooth,
the end of it all, their moment of truth,
the good that I’ve done with that drunkard’s gun --
all nothing compared to the cleansing to come.”
I see how all you did was done,
from backwards boots to muffled gun.
The game you started soon will end,
your throat cut by a dead man’s friend.
Beware the snow, beware the sun,
the night, the day, nowhere to run.
With sorrow first his grave I’ll tend.
and then to hell his killer send.
再摘几段我很喜欢的文字：
美国东北部山区秋季的美景以及格尼对自己不厌其烦地分析再分析…He realized that planting tulip bulbs on a glorious Indian summer day in a hilltop garden overlooking a rolling panorama of crimson autumn woods and emerald pastures under a cobalt sky was not a particularly onerous assignment. He just hated being interrupted. And this reaction to interruption, he told himself, was a byproduct of his greatest strength: the linear, logical mind that had made him such an effective detective -- the mind that was jarred by the slightest discontinuity in a suspect’s story, that could sense a fissure too tiny for most eyes to see.
梅勒瑞的形象: After rereading the email a third time, Gurney put it back in the folder and let his mind wander over the recollections it stirred up from the back bins of his memory: the morning classes in which Mellery had looked hung-over and bored, his gradual coming to life in the afternoon, his wild Irish jabs of wit and insight in the wee hours fueled by alcohol. He was a natural actor, undisputed star of the college dramatic society -- a young man who, however full of life he might be at the Shamrock Bar, was doubly alive on the stage. He was a man who depended on an audience -- a man who was drawn up to his full height only in the nourishing light of admiration.
大爱那句“They were more like an intangible presence in the atmosphere than the product of a specific storm”: The sparkling autumn weather deteriorated that afternoon. The clouds, which in the morning had been joyful little cotton-ball clichés, darkened. Premonitory rumbles of thunder could be heard -- so far in the distance that the direction from which they originated was unclear. They were more like an intangible presence in the atmosphere than the product of a specific storm -- a perception that strengthened as they persisted over a period of hours, seeming neither to draw closer nor entirely cease.
夕阳美景：Gurney drove most of the way home oblivious to his surroundings. It was not until he had driven up into the high end of the valley past Abelard’s General Store in Dillweed that he became aware that the clouds which had gathered earlier in the day were gone, and in their place a remarkable glow from the setting sun was illuminating the western face of the hills. The snowy cornfields that bordered the meandering river were bathed in a pastel so rich his eyes widened at the sight. Then, with surprising speed, the coral sun descended below the opposing ridge, and the glow was extinguished. Again the leafless trees were black, the snow a vacant white.
再来一段山区雪景：A family of cautious crows, their harsh cries the only sound in the cold air, took flight from bare treetops a hundred yards ahead of him and soon disappeared over the ridge, leaving behind an even deeper silence.
As Gurney emerged from the woods onto the promontory above Carlson’s hillside farm, he saw Madeleine. She was sitting motionless on a stone slab, perhaps fifty feet from him, looking out over the rolling landscape that receded to the horizon with only two distant silos and a meandering road to suggest any human presence. He stopped, transfixed by the stillness of her pose. She seemed so ... so absolutely solitary ... yet so intensely connected to her world. A kind of beacon, beckoning him to a place just beyond his reach
来段幽默的，这段是我认为全书中最搞笑的段落，因为——我一开始和Blatt的想法一样！Holdenfield smiled unhappily. “Is everyone at least familiar in a general way with the Holmes Typology of Serial Murder?”
The assortment of murmurs and nods around the table was generally affirmative. Only Blatt had a question. “Sherlock Holmes?”
Gurney wasn’t sure whether this was a stupid joke or just stupid.
“R.M. Holmes -- a bit more contemporary, and an actual person,” said Holdenfield in an exaggeratedly benign tone that Gurney couldn’t quite place. Was it possible she was mimicking Mister Rogers addressing a five-year-old?
最后一段是描述人物内心的：She ignored what he said, following her own train of thought. “I hoped if we opened the box, looked at his little drawings ... we could say goodbye to him together. But you don’t say goodbye, do you? You never say goodbye to anything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,“ he protested. But that wasn’t true. When they’d been about to move from the city up to Walnut Crossing, Madeleine spent hours saying goodbye. Not only to neighbors, but to the place itself, things they were leaving behind, houseplants. It had gotten under his skin. He’d complained about her sentimentality, said talking to inanimate objects was weird, a waste of time, a distraction, that it was only making their departure more difficult. But it was more than that. Her behavior was touching something in him that he didn’t want touched -- and now she’d put her finger on it again -- the part of him that never wanted to say goodbye, that couldn’t face separation.
P.S. 7月12日，兰登书屋旗下的皇冠出版社刚刚出版了Think of a Number的续作，给了我一个大大的惊喜，虽然我去年查资料时就得知John Verdon一下签了三本小说的合同，都以Gurney为主角，但一年一本的写作速度还是让我吃了一惊，回头看看我写论文的速度，真是惭愧羞愧以及愧得无地自容。坚定地打算继续追下去，不过以自己的财力，铁定是要等到明年出简装版才能买了（好在今年有冰与火之歌垫底儿，五大砖头般的厚本，不至于馋Verdon的书到望眼欲穿的痛苦地步）。此书名为 “Shut Your Eyes Tight”。