Eight Detectives: The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

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Alex Pavesi's Eight Detectives is a delightfully inventive and enjoyable debut which plays fascinating games with the classic murder mystery and puts a fresh spin on the notion of whodunit. Bravo! -- Martin Edwards, winner of the 2020 Diamond Dagger An hour or two, but he’s been drinking.’ Henry was sitting sideways in his chair, with his legs hooked over the arm and a guitar resting on his lap. ‘Knowing Bunny, he’ll be asleep until dinner time.’

I have never read a book quite like this. It's original, clever and compelling - and the revelations at the end took me totally by surprise. -- Rachel Abbott The novel is ¾ made up by these short stories...and dare I say, or write, that they are at best mediocre?Alex Pavesi's Eight Detectives is a delightfully inventive and enjoyable debut which plays fascinating games with the classic murder mystery and puts a fresh spin on the notion of whodunit. Bravo! Martin Edwards, winner of the 2020 Diamond Dagger Terrific. Alex Pavesi knows the genre inside out. One of the year's most entertaining crime novels * Sunday Times, Crime Book of the Month * 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. Are they clues or does Julia have her own mystery to solve.

Has an intricacy rare in modern crime fiction. Alex Pavesi deserves huge applause for his plot, constructed with all the skill of the old masters Sunday Express Let me go.’ She elbowed him off and ran forward, and then with her shoulders out of his way he saw what she had seen: a pointing finger of blood reaching from below Bunny’s door towards the top of the stairs, pointing straight at him. Mathematician and first-time novelist Pavesi creates a metamystery that could as easily go in a bookstore’s puzzle section as on the crime shelves. She turned to face him, her eyes narrowed. ‘Chess is a cheap metaphor. It’s what men use when they want to talk in a grandiose way about conflict.’ This is a case of a blurb promising more than the book delivers. It certainly isn’t “thrilling” (it isn’t even trying to be thrilling) and I also wouldn’t call it “wildly inventive”. The short stories are Agatha Christie-esque, particularly “Trouble on Blue Pearl Island” which is intended as an homage to Christie’s “And Then There Were None”. That was my favorite story because of its diabolical ending. My problem was that the stories weren’t great. Late in the book there is a twist that presents an alternative ending for each story. The new ending didn’t improve any story. Then there is a second twist, and a third one. I think the plot actually had the potential to be clever if the characters had more bite to them. This is not a battle of wits. The characters are more likely to curl up into a fetal position than they are to engage. Also, the short stories could have been better. 3.5 stars

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For me, this was a clunky, poorly written book. It is possible that the short stories are written badly on purpose. I hope so because they’re distasteful on the whole and full of dreadful metaphors. Having said that, I don’t think the rest of the book is well written either. It’s clear that the intention was to write a clever variable on classic murder / detective mysteries from The Golden Age but, in my opinion, it fails on all counts. It didn’t give me any pleasure whatsoever. This book is about a mathematician who has a long-forgotten book of short mysteries rediscovered by a modern day publisher. Through their discussions, we learn he has a mathematical theory about the structure of mysteries. We also see that he may be dropping clues about a larger motive for writing these stories. This is a book within a book, and within both stories the reader is given a bunch of theories and clues to figure out. Some of the time I felt like I was reading Agatha Christie and other times I was put in mind of the Encyclopedia Brown books I loved as a kid. All the stories culminate in a larger mystery to solve. The structure of the book is unlike anything I’ve read before and I can’t imagine how tough it must have been to create. The Eighth Detective" by debut author Alex Pavesi is a fascinating puzzle, a unique perspective on the murder mystery. "The killer or killers must be drawn from the group of suspects [mathematically speaking], the killer(s) must be a subset of the suspects...". Why is Grant McAllister's book titled "The White Murders"? Readers are in for an innovative, very creative read. Kudos to Alex Pavesi. I loved this intelligent and inventive novel and I'm sure that it will find legions of fans amongst aficionados of classic crime. It's the most fun I've had in ages Cathy Rentzenbrink

Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for sending me an ARC of The Eighth Detective in exchange for an honest review.

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The footpath on the southern coast of Evescombe was isolated. It was a perfect place to murder someone...all it takes is a gentle push...decades of erosion...possible 'Death by Distraction'? According to Grant's mathematical concepts-two suspects could be guilty...a suspect or the victim as suspect. In the 1930s, Grant McAllister, a mathematics professor turned author, worked them out, hiding their secrets in a book of crime stories. This is a short story collection inside a novel. “The Eighth Detective” is about a book editor who wants to publish an obscure novel of short story mysteries. The obscure novel was written by a mathematician who intends to prove that all mysteries follow a mathematical formula. This mathematician, McAllister, had written a research paper entitled “The Permutations of Detective Fiction” stating that specific criteria must be adhered to for a murder mystery. For example, there is the whole set of characters; the subsets are: victim(s), suspects (must be at least 2), a killer(s), and detective(s). The permutations of the different elements are multiple(and yes a victim can solve their own murder and be a detective).

At each session with the author, Julia reads one story aloud, and then she and McAllister discuss it in detail. Alex Pavesi has written one of the most creative detective novels of the year...if not of all time. Sharp writing, crisp dialogue, and the end will leave you reeling. An incredible debut novel! Samantha Downing, bestselling author of My Lovely Wife The description implies that there are clues to a cold case within the stories, which is true if you know the details of the cold case, but these aren’t given until nearly the end. There was no way for me as a reader to connect the dots and make an attempt at solving that myself. That is apparently not one of the rules of murder mystery writing! It was pointed out by Julia that there were inconsistencies in the text, some that I noticed but it was a bit like they wanted us to play editor rather than solve anything. Thirty years later he's retired in a Mediterranean island until Julia Hart, an editor, shows interest in republishing his book, and while revising his stories she discovers certain inconsistencies that point to a bigger mystery. Grant McAllister is a retired mathematician living on a remote island in the Mediterranean. Over twenty years ago he wrote a collection of mystery stories and had a meager publishing of them. Julia Hart is an editor representing a small publisher who found a copy of the book and wants to republish the collection. She arranges a meeting and they read and discuss each story methodically, fitting them into his carefully designed mathematical theory of mystery construction.Julia Hart is an editor who visits Grant McAllister, the reclusive mathematician, with an offer to republish his sole book of short stories. The stories are mysteries that Grant wrote about 30 years ago as illustrations of his theory of mysteries. This book consists of alternating chapters. Each of the short stories is followed by a chapter in which Julia and Grant discuss the story and she tries to ferret out hidden meaning in the story and details of Grant’s life She approached the bed, stepping around the puddles on the floor. When she was a foot away from the body, Henry stopped her. ‘Do you think we should?’ This book is all about the story, not the characters. If you want characters to bond with, you won’t be happy with this book.