Eight Detectives: The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

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I said the story is present-day-ish. One reading of the dates suggests that Hart and McAllister are meeting in 1965 – twenty-five years after the short story collection, The White Murders, had first been published in 1940. To fans of meta-fiction, 1965 would fit because it was the publication date of John Fowles’ The Magus, a novel about a similarly disparate couple on a Mediterranean island, but that may be no more than serendipity. In publicity Alex Pavesi has talked about Agatha Christie and country houses, but the stories show other influences, many of them post Golden Age. The third story, for instance , “A Detective and his Evidence” is set in the grand houses around a tree-filled London square, but the detective and his motives are closer to those of G F Newman than Dorothy L Sayers or Freeman Wills Crofts. 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.

It’s a good setup, but not a unique one. Instead, the first thing that sets The Eighth Detective apart is the structure of the novel. The chapters alternate between the collection’s seven short stories and the conversations between Grant and Julia following each story. The seven stories are clever, old school murder mysteries, and the book only work because each story stands up on its own merits as an entertaining mystery. More importantly, The Eighth Detective is quite unusual because it’s incredibly subversive about the murder mystery/detective genre. Little is as it seems in this novel, and the final third contains numerous earned twists, and no less than two endings that nicely illustrate the book’s theme. Who knows,’ said Henry. ‘Right now he’s sleeping the sleep of the just-had-lunch.’ She didn’t smile. ‘You can go ahead and leave. I think anything he has to say can wait.’ Terrific. Alex Pavesi knows the genre inside out. One of the year's most entertaining crime novels * Sunday Times, Crime Book of the Month * Second in the military crime series featuring Special Agents Scott Brodie and Magnolia "Maggie" Taylor, after The Deserter (2019).For instance, more than one character in the book finds a dead body (or bodies) and never bothers to call the police. Instead, they proceed to investigate the crime themselves. Moreover there's an instance of police brutality that's over the top for me.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Alex Pavesi), and the publisher (Henry Holt and Company) for a copy of the book. 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. All in all I found this a curiously different idea. The explanation of detective stories via mathematics was intriguing. The whole broader picture I really did find entertaining. What about the ending I hear you ask. Well in true Christie style my lips are sealed however I did find the ending satisfying. Aspects of it I had my suspicions about - some parts took me by surprise. This may be a book for fans of a particular genre however I think many of them would find this entertaining as I did.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 * So, so clever. A twisty story and an education in the maths of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie would take her hat off to this one - bravo! Sarah Pinborough Did Grant put them intentionally to test the readers’ focus or does he have a hidden agenda to connect with those stories with real life murder? Twenty-five years later, a publisher called 'Blood Type Books' wants to re-issue McAllister's stories, with an introduction explaining the mathematical basis of the tales. To this end, the publisher sends editor Julia Hart to interview McAllister.