This reads like a very clever combination of classic mystery novel with a contemporary feel. It's wildly unpredictable (having so many different stories within it helps), and I think many will like the idea of a mathematical formula for mysteries. This stands out with a creative premise and execution.

The Eighth Detective is a clever thinking-man’s thriller that uses golden-age mystery tropes in an imaginative way. It’s a modern homage to the genre. And, surprisingly, a debut!

It’s 1930 in Spain. Megan, Henry and Bunny meet to discuss their old Oxford school days. Bunny says, “The three of us need to have a conversation, away from Spanish eyes.” However, tiring after a long walk home, Bunny has a siesta from which he never awakens. It’s a locked room mystery where the assailant had to go up a staircase next to where Megan and Henry were sitting. Both Megan and Henry propose complicated solutions rarely found outside the last chapter of Agatha Christie mysteries. It ends with a surprising twist.

Luckily, Megan, Henry, and Bunny’s tale is just one of seven stories within this book. The overarching plot is of the author of the stories, Grant. He is working with an editor, Julia, to get his tales ready for publication. It has a behind-the-scenes effect that is enchanting. Next, throw some math in there showing the “mathematical structure of mysteries”. Add what the minimum number of items are necessary for a plot to be a mystery with a story or two to use as an example. Stir well.

I adored The Eighth Detective. It is definitely one of my favorites. If you too want to see how the sausage is being made, I suggest reading this enchanting tale. 5 stars!

Thanks to Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Boy, I had my hopes too high for this one, or I’m too dense to understand the purpose of this book. I didn’t find the stories relevant. The first thing that bothered me was the number of characters who when confronting a dead body don’t call the police. I understand that this is supposed to reflect on what I was presented and be able to solve the murder, but all I ended up with was a headache. Since, in theory, they were written by a mathematician in 1937I should have expected something cut and dry like this. I was expecting more Agatha Christie. I bet this is a book, readers really like or don’t relate to at all.

Writing exercise

I'm not in the mood these days to read a mystery that is an exercise in style. "The Eighth Detective" is an iterative mystery adding people into a looping story. I put it down.

“Remember that I’ve rejected the view of detective stories as logical puzzles, where the clues define a unique solution and the process of deriving it is almost mathematical. It’s not, and they never do. That’s all just sleight of hand.... [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. That’s the beauty of the genre.... It presents the reader with a small, finite number of options, and then at the end it just circles back and commits to one of them. It’s really a miracle that the human brain could ever be surprised by such a solution, when you think about it.”

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

Thirty years ago, Grant McCallister wrote a mathematical paper titled “The Permutations of Detective Fiction,” which set out to prove the ingredients of every murder mystery. As part of demonstrating the paper’s arguments, he wrote seven murder mysteries later published in a collection called The White Murders. Now, Julia Hart meets with Grant on a remote island to review and edit the stories so that the collection can be republished. But Julia keeps finding subtle, deliberate errors in the stories. What do those errors mean? Are they clues showing some connection between the collection—and Grant—and a long ago unsolved murder?

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.

The Eighth Detective is an original, clever, and subversive take on classic murder mysteries. Recommended.

While Alex Pavesi’s concept in The Eighth Detective isn’t entirely new, it’s still entirely welcome and ingenious. John Dickson Carr, in his novel The Three Coffins (1935), presented a locked room mystery, while at the same time breaking away to analyze and discuss the mechanics of detective fiction to his readers. Carr’s hero, Dr. Gideon Fell, takes on the job of explaining the various plot variations. Pavesi has taken it a step further even than the ingenious Carr, however.

Pavesi’s central character in the novel, Grant McCallister, lives a hermit’s life on a remote island. Twenty years ago, he’d written a book called The White Murders, published in the early 1940’s. The book in our hands is a series of short murder mystery stories, interspersed with McCallister’s mathematical analysis of the murder mystery. There are a certain number of required elements and within this structure – and, as mystery readers everywhere already know – there are endless variations.

McCallister is being visited by an editor, Julia Hart, whose publisher is interested in reprinting The White Murders. To that end, she reads aloud each short mystery, and then she and Grant discuss the stories, including whatever slight discrepancies there might be in each one.

After each story, a new element of detective fiction is introduced: suspects, a detective, a killer or killers. How these elements intersect provides the various, as McAllister calls them, permutations of detective fiction. Each story provides a different example, some very clearly based on Agatha Christie’s novels. Because Christie was responsible for creating many of the tropes of detective fiction – most famously: everyone is the killer, the narrator is the killer, and everyone is killed – these are the tropes chosen by Pavesi in his clever, bitter little stories.

As the book progresses, Julia also quizzes Grant about himself – why does he live alone on a remote island? Why has he never written anything else? Why does he have such a hazy memory of stories he, after all, has written, even if twenty years ago?

There are so many calls and references to other mysteries within the pages of this book that to truly appreciate it I think you almost have to be a lifelong, hardcore lover of the genre. (The setting and time period made me think of Mary Stewart’s romantic 1962 novel The Moonspinners). The stories, however, are vivid in and of themselves.

And the clever story within a story, Julia’s editing and questioning of Grant himself, create yet another permutation of the book itself. Some of the stories are stronger than others. My personal favorite was the one based on Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939). Pavesi takes it one further by having a family close enough to the death island to wonder what’s happening there, enough to make them go and investigate. He creates observers for us, as readers, to observe.

Because the book sets itself smack in the middle of the golden age of detective fiction – a time when Christie, Sayers and others were writing – and then self consciously looks back at the 40’s not from the present but instead from the late 1960’s, the perceptions then are filtered once again by our own in the present day. Pavesi is placing us at one remove from the pleasure of pure narrative storytelling and inviting us, instead, to consider and analyze detective fiction. I think his ultimate question is, what makes detective fiction so enjoyable?

The book asks the reader if the detective novel has worn itself out. I think we can answer a resounding “no”, as long as books as clever and memorable as this one continue to be written. The permutations of suspects, detective and killer continue to fascinate us, as does the resolution and answers provided by the mystery novel. The Eighth Detective does not disappoint, as it presents these elements as well as providing the reader with a more than delicious resolution. This is the kind of book you may want to read again the minute you finish it.

The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi is about murder stories taken place before World War II. The Eighth Detective is a story within stories, it works as both a short story anthology and an over-arching narrative. The novel is very clever in the way twist are laid out, the end is filled with so many twists they actually where's out their welcome. There are 7 short stories in this novel all involving murder and a mathematic formula to make a murder mystery work. The short stories are borrowed from mainly Agatha Christie stories, I'm sure for legal reasons the story could not mention her by name. The short stories are good with some being great, but I enjoyed the conversations after more, where the story is broken down and discussed. Thanks to Netgalley and Henry and Holt Company for granting me a copy. The Eighth Detective was published on 8-4-2020.

Favorite Quote: Chess is a cheap metaphor. It's what men use to talk in a grandiose way about conflict.

The Plot: Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, worked out a theory thirty years ago about how to create the perfect murder mystery stories. After the theory was published, he quietly wrote a book of 7 short stories testing the theory. The book has came and went, but now 30 years later a young editor Julia is interested in republishing the book and wants access to the Grant McAllister who lives a quiet life away as a recluse. Grant is real iffy on his past not really wanting to discuss it. They start reading his short stories and breaking them down after exposing little truth and some he can't or won't answer like the similarity in the title and the real murder called The White Murder.

What I Liked: The conversations on the breakdown of stories are so good. The first short story is really good and immediately had me hooked. There's one short story that takes place on the remote island after the aftermath of one of my favorite Agatha Christie stories And Then There Were None. I liked this one it intrigued me because it would be so hard to figure out what happened, and the perfect place for murder. This story was the only direct clone the ending's of The Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd are part of the perfect endings. The language and lines of dialogue are good and through out the short stories. The main twist is really good with how clever it is.

What I Disliked: The first thing that intrigued me was the comparison to the White Murders, it's kind of answered but I wanted more facts. How do you not think or acknowledge Agatha Christie in the Foreword or Afterword. I thought at the end there was too many twist that did not involve the short stories we just analyzed.

Recommendations: I'm going to barely recommend this one, the short stories for the most part are good and the conversations after are even better. If you like classic murder mystery that involves thought and deduction and not forensics then this novel is for you. You're never going to be as good as Agatha Christie but it is still enjoyable. This book is getting unfairly compared to The 7 and a half Murders of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton who reinvented the murder mystery and told it in a unique way, the Eighth detective just has a unique telling. This was another hard review for me to place, I kept going back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but eventually settled on a number barely making it to the threshold. I rated The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi 4 out of 5 stars. I will look for Pavesi books in the future, I see a lot of promise in the writing.

This book was a slow burn for me that kept getting better and better as I read it. It was well written and very original! The stories (it's a tale within a tale) have an Agatha Christie like feel to them.

The Eighth Detective is a fascinating puzzle with eight murders involved. If you are a fan of old-time murder mysteries, you are in for a treat!

It was genuinely a joy to read and I would recommend it, no consider it a mandatory read, for any mystery reading enthusiast!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for my ARC in exchange for an honest review

Hm just finished this very different mystery and I am trying to decide still what I think about it in regards to what worked and what didn’t. But regardless, you can’t say that it doesn’t make you think and it is very ingenious.

There are lots of summaries of the plot so I won’t bore you with that here, but I have to say that for me the short stories made it harder for the story to really hook me if you see what I mean. None of them are great and they are different so you feel like you are never at that what happens next point. More like a collection of short stories. However, I did really enjoy the conversations between Grant and Julia that tie everything together. That is what you come back for.

I cannot help but admire when an author can so skillfully write something so original. And so many different endings and possibilities that your head swims. I actually tried to follow the math explanations, too! This is definitely an author I will read again just to see what they come up with next. Thank you to Netflix and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Eighth Detective is a clever book, both an anthology of short mysteries and a novel at the same time. The conceit is that long ago, mathematics professor Grant McAllister developed a set of mathematical rules for murder mysteries, writing seven short stories to illustrate them. But that was thirty years ago, and his work has been long forgotten. That is, until Julia Hart, an editor, discovers an old copy and decides to reissue them along with an introduction she plans to write. But first, she has some questions.

The book is organized into a reading of each short story aloud to McAllister and then a short post-reading discussion where McAllister explains how the story exemplifies the rule and Julia asking about minor errors and inconsistencies in the text and how they seem to connect to a long-ago unsolved murder.



The Eighth Detective is ingenious and original. I have never read a mystery quite like it. The individual stories were good mysteries, though some were quite macabre. Nonetheless, they hung together and really seemed to be illustrating the mathematical rules perfectly. And yet, it was all misdirection, as we learn when we get to the totally surprising, yet completely fair, denouement. I truly enjoyed every bit of the book, though I think the ending was a bit unresolved. In fact, there are alternate endings proposed in two epilogues which makes sense given what we learn, but neither of the epilogues really achieved the quality of the rest of the book.

I received an e-galley of The Eighth Detective from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Eighth Detective at Henry Holt & Co. | Macmillan
Alex Pavesi on Twitter

If you read the blurb above for The Eighth Detective, you can see why I was drawn to the book. I adore murder mysteries and the set up here, an editor wanting to re-publish a reclusive authors detective story collection, but discovering that there’s a larger mystery to solve, sounds right up my alley. Overall, though, I was disappointed.

Granted, The Eighth Detective is unique. We all know that there are rules to murder mysteries, but here the author plays around with them and shows the variations well. For me though, it was just trying to be too clever. I like a good puzzle, I like twists, but here the author clearly planned his revelations, but by the time he let us in on what was really going on, I didn’t care. The ideas behind what makes a murder mystery a murder mystery were interesting enough, but not ground-breaking.

The book annoyed me more than anything else. It starts off with one of the stories within the story, which is overwritten with ridiculous metaphors, but okay, the writing style is to set it apart as the “fiction” inside the actual story. Then we’re introduced to Grant, an author apparently hiding on a Mediterranean Island, and Julia, the editor. Neither are particularly likeable. Julia’s fine, but we don’t get to know her well (I guess until the end, but then it’s too late to matter). Grant seems to have forgotten most of the stories he wrote 20 years ago. I did love the setting though. You could feel the heat and smell the ocean.

By the end, I was just glad to be done with the book and to know the big surprise. Eh. Maybe I should just avoid metafiction. Too often it seems like the concept trumps an enjoyable story.

That being said, I’m sure a lot of people will enjoy this one. It is clever and maybe that’s enough.

This is a clever, original mystery. A mathematician wrote a book of murder mystery short stories in the 1930s. The book was meant to outline the necessary rules for a mystery. ”The number of suspects must be two or more, otherwise there is no mystery, and the number of killers and victims must be at least one each, otherwise there no murder...Then the final requirement is the most important. The killer must be drawn from the set of suspects.”
Now, years later, a small publishing company is looking to re-publish the book and a young editor is sent to work with the author to polish those stories. Because each of the stories has inconsistencies. But she soon realizes the inconsistencies are on purpose. But what is that purpose? Because Grant, the author isn’t saying. The trick becomes to find the inconsistencies before Julia does.
While I appreciated the “game”, if you will, I can’t say the book was altogether enjoyable. This book is all about how clever the author can be, how convoluted he can make the tale. I can only imagine the notes and plotting necessary to keep everything straight through until the end. It’s meant to evoke Agatha Christie and other writers of her ilk. One story was so similar as to be a knockoff. At times, the writing felt forced. I much preferred Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders or Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders.
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.
My thanks to netgalley and Henry Holt and Co. for an advance copy of this book.

From the description, I think that I may have had my hopes a bit too high for this one. Honestly, I expected something a bit Agatha Christie-esque, but still being fresh and original. And while on the surface, I suppose, this does meet that, I just never found myself enjoying this the way that I had hoped to.

There are seven short stories here, each its own self-contained murder mystery and between these stories are conversations between the editor who hopes to re-release the collection and the aging author, But, the narrative holding the stories together, frankly takes too long to really develop. The ending reveals things in a heavy-handed fashion that I just didn't care for at all. None of the characters are more than shallowly drawn - not even those in the larger frame who play a larger role. I suppose that the mechanics of the inconsistencies within the stories would give a group of readers something to discuss, but even that is really done for them in the frame... In some ways, this reminded me of those two minute mysteries for younger readers, when it wasn't trying to bring Agatha Christie to mind with a forceful hand.

I had really wanted to like this one - and I had really hoped that it would get better, but I just didn't like it at all. I did finish it, which I suppose says something. In general, I don't care much for short stories. I just don't find them very satisfying, so I suppose my own dictate for this is part of this. But, honestly, the stories are the best part of this (well, until even they are spoiled).

At its core, this is an interesting concept for a book - and I wish that the frame had been stronger to support the unwieldy ending that also included its own inconsistencies... I really never found myself enjoying this one and I just really had wanted to, which makes it all the more disappointing!

The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi is part Crime novel and part Detective novel. The premise is an interesting one. You have a young editor, Julia Hart, who finds a novel, The White Murders, published decades earlier and she contacts the author wanting to publish the book again. The author entertains her idea and they meet to discuss it. What should have been a straight forward meeting between the two is anything but. The book is a series of mini detective novels. Each chapter a different book. But when Julia starts to question the author, Grant McAllister, she starts to think that something is not adding up. And boy is she right. There are multiple ways this book could go, and I never knew which way Mr. Pavesi would turn next. When the plot was finally revealed, my jaw dropped. I will not reveal any more, but I will add that I did enjoy this book even though the format could get a little confusing at times. ⭐

Amanda and Clay have a perfectly wonderful life, two children, good jobs, a nice apartment in Brooklyn but they are looking for more. They arrange a getaway week in a rental house in rural Long Island but this will not be an idyllic vacation. They have no cell phone connection and there is a mysterious blackout in New York. They are isolated, and then the tension really ratchets up when there is an unexpected knock on their door after midnight. This novel would be an excellent book club choice because of the variety of moral choices that each character confronts and its reflection on the world we actually live in and accept.

This book was a true homage to the classic murder mystery. In one of the more interesting formats I've read recently, this book within a book told the story of Julia Hart, a book editor, meeting with author and professor Grant McAllister to discuss his mathematical analysis of the elements that comprise the perfect murder mystery, alternating chapters with the short murder mysteries he wrote to demonstrate each interesting permutation of the classic detective novel. However, as Julia reads through his stories, she notices inconsistencies that add up to a real-life mystery for her to solve. Fans of Agatha Christine, Sherlock Holmes, and the old-fashioned whodunnit will enjoy this book and piecing the clues together. Because of the alternating chapters format, I did feel that the book moved slowly because the plot was broken up by the independent stories, but found each of the murder mysteries to be an enjoyable puzzle to solve, and the larger mystery at the end was quite the change of events! Thank you to Henry Holt and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

As an avid thriller/mystery/sci-fi reader, it feels rote to say something like "X book breaks the mold", but The Eighth Detective is truly a unique piece of work, and highly recommended.

If you're a diehard fan of classic, nostalgic detective murder mysteries, then this book will be an absolute TREAT for you!

I was hooked right away by the unique story format. You get 7 mini murder mysteries (individual chapters on their own) that were written long ago by an aging, reclusive mathematician who figured out a precise formula for the detective mystery. These engaging stories are standalone gems on their own and harken back to Agatha Christie - taking cues from some of her most famous storylines - and the comparisons are always noted and appreciated. In between these stories you start to see a modern day mystery unraveling between the writer and his new editor who has come on behalf of the publishing house that uncovered this aged collection. As the young editor, Julia, starts to uncover inconsistencies in each story, you strive to match her attention to detail, becoming a better reader yourself along the way.

I didn't want this book to end. It felt nostalgic but fresh, and the twist after twist after twist left me extremely satisfied as a murder mystery enthusiast.

What was this book?? I'm still reeling from it. I was definitely not expecting this. Wow. Absolutely amazing!

There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. The rest is just shuffling the sequence. Expanding the permutations. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out – calculating the different orders and possibilities of a mystery into seven perfect detective stories he quietly published. But that was thirty years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.

Until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it.

But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

That blurb above makes for compelling reading where you itch to read the book. When I started the book I did not have any high expectations as such. I thought it would probably be an entertaining read. Well.... it wasn't just entertaining.

It was a fantastic read! It was engaging, compelling, intelligent, original and brilliant. As a reader, you are drawn into the world of the murder mysteries written by Grant and then you are sucked into trying to solve it as well.

I would definitely recommend this well-paced, plotted and original novel.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for sending an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A great mystery novel! I absolutely loved this book and cannot wait to read others by Pavesi! Please keep writing!! I enjoyed the style of the book and how each "chapter" was divided. Great read!