Eight Detectives: The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

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If you enjoy books that present the reader with a plot that challenges the mind, definitely give The Eighth Detective a try this August. Think of three separate circles: the detective, the suspects, and the murderer who was never one of the suspects. This is a highly entertaining, twisted and intriguing thriller, that will appeal to many readers of crime fiction, especially those who love their classic golden age of crime mysteries. The rules for murder mysteries are there must be a victim, a suspect and a detective made up of changes to make the story. So as I trudged through the 7 “short stories” that make up a good part of this book, I realized it was taking effort.

The author surprises from the first chapter, is always one step ahead, and constantly gives you this feeling that something macabre is happening behind your back! It’s capped with a stunning ending that had me rewinding the audiobook to make certain I’d heard what I heard. Not long enough to develop character, the plot of each is definitely more important, though all offer a mistake, a twist and a solution which the reader is challenged to spot.The obscure novel was written by a mathematician who intends to prove that all mysteries follow a mathematical formula. Once they start to revisit the stories Julia discovers that there are things that don’t add up and there are inconsistencies that raise her suspicions. Construction of the whole novel apart, if you have liked the post-war short story collections of Julian Symons, Ngaio Marsh or Christianna Brand, you will recognise something of the same atmosphere here – crime stories, not stories of detection, even if there is a detective.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Henry Holt and Alex Pavesi for this totally original and very smart mystery to read in exchange for my honest review. Those in-between focused on the present-day fictional author and his new editor, as they battled for wits, truth, and dominance.The common problem is that the stories you love don't last long enough and the stories you don't like kind of drag along. Maybe it would have worked better for me if we had known all the facts of the White murder from the beginning, so then we could have look ourselves for those clues while reading Grant's stories. The partners deliver a few punchlines of their own in this fast-moving story that’s replete with twists and danger.

Psychologists have a word for those who see patterns where no pattern exists: pareidolia, but I think it does not apply to me. The book structure is pretty ingenious, with a discussion between author and editor after each short story. Years before, Grant self-published a short collection of murder mysteries to demonstrate the framework and formula he believes can be applied to every story in the genre. T]he central purpose of a murder mystery is to give its readers a handful of suspects and the promise that in about a hundred pages one or more of them will be revealed as the murderers. Sparkling Cyanide centred around the Barton family and the deaths of Rosemary and George a year apart, while Colonel Race saved the day.It felt absurd now to think of the three of them in Oxford together, all those years ago; he’d aged seemingly ten years more than they had. This gets a top rating from me for the intricate layering that Pavesi accomplished using a fictional book entitled "The White Murders" as a centerpiece. Henry leaned forward and counted the number of squares between them: she was standing diagonally across from him, a distance of seven white tiles. She grew impatient and picked up a whole handful of stones, throwing them one by one until her hands were empty. Now editor Julia Trent has tracked him down and come to see him with the offer of republishing his book.