Eight Detectives: The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month

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Even Julia and Grant are not detailed characters, there is no pen portrait of either, but it is the mystery itself which becomes the focus and drives the novel. Alternative endings to each short story are offered and indeed, there is even a choice of endings when the novel finally reaches (or appears to reach) its conclusion. Many years ago Grant McAllister, a professor of Mathematics, came up with rules applying to murder fiction. He then wrote seven stories that were perfect examples of this to him. The book had little interest and he now lives on a Mediterranean island in peace and seclusion. His peace is disturbed by the arrival of Julia Hart, an editor, whose publisher wants to reprint the book. Julia reads each story to Grant and then asks him about them. There are some inconsistencies in the stories and his answers to questions. I liked how Julia pointed to the clues and inconsistencies in the stories. What I didn't like was that we didn't have a way to tie this clues into the bigger mystery ourselves until we were specifically told about it. 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. 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.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It promised a clever twist on the classic murder mystery genre, a mind-bending story of books and mysteries within mysteries. The short story format probably doesn’t help – I’m not a fan of short stories, but I thought because there’s an underlying story running through all of them it would make for an interesting format. Unfortunately there’s really not enough of the main story between Julia and Grant here for me, and I didn’t feel able to connect with these characters aside from a vague sense of intrigue as to where it was all leading. Then – we are about five-sixths of the way through the book – a new style of chapter heading begins a complete reconsideration of everything that has gone before, including the stories we have read. This is where I started to think “I didn’t see that coming”. And that is where I stop before giving away any spoiler bar this one: from then on it was not just once that I thought “I didn’t see that coming”. I did not anticipate quite how extraordinary this was going to be. The plot sounded intriguing but I was thrilled to find that every short story this fictional author wrote was also included here, on each altering chapter. Those in-between focused on the present-day fictional author and his new editor, as they battled for wits, truth, and dominance. I'm unsure which was more clever - the myriad of collected tales with their disparate and unguessable endings, or the story arc that combined them all and had me equally as floored by the grand reveals and concluding twists. Towards the end things start changing all over the place and I’m not sure I liked how it was done. It’s an unusual take on the unreliable narrator, I can say that at the very least. I didn’t feel any satisfaction or surprise, I just thought it was a bit silly. I suppose it was set in the past so that it was easier to accept ignorance of things.

Julia wants to sit with the author to revisit the stories and convince him to republish his book. Julia Hart the editor wants to understand why the author is hiding from his past. In the 1930s, Grant McAllister, a mathematics professor turned author, worked them out, hiding their secrets in a book of crime stories. 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. It’s hell, just waiting here.’ Megan was sitting to the right of the archway. ‘How long does a siesta normally take, anyway?’ The Eighth Detective is an entertaining read, with some clever surprises. However I felt like I was REALLY reading stories published in the early 1900s....stories that had very unrealistic premises.

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.

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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? 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 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. To illustrate his ideas, McAllister wrote seven detective stories, and published them in a book called 'The White Murders.' Henry strummed the guitar as a way of changing the subject. ‘Do you know how to tune this thing?’ He’d found it hanging on the wall above his chair. ‘I could play this if it was tuned.’