by Alex Parvesi (Parvesi)
There are a lot of layers in this intriguing mystery novel by Alex Pavesi. At its core, it is about a young editor traveling to a remote Mediterranean island to interview a reclusive author. Grant McAllister is a professor of mathematics, who devised a mathematical model by which all mystery stories can be plotted. Decades ago, to illustrate his theory, he wrote a collection of 7 mystery short stories, entitled “The White Murders”, which has long been out of print. Julia Hart works for a small specialty press, interested in bringing “The White Murders” back into publication, but only if Julia can get some more information from McAllister about his mathematical mystery fiction formula and some answers about some seeming incongruities in his stories.
This novel has alternating chapters as Julia reads the stories back to Grant, then as they discuss them. And the further we go, the more obvious it becomes that not all is as clear and clean-cut as both Julia and Grant would have us believe. To say more would be to spoil the fun of discovering the rest of the details.
The Eighth Detective is a twisting, ebbing and flowing mystery novel, with a number of surprises. In the end, perhaps it is not as surprising as it wants to be, but it is still a fun and challenging read, and as the last few chapters lock into place, you’ll wonder if you read the earlier ones close enough to see all the clues.
[ publisher’s official The Eighth Detective web page ] | [ official Alex Pavesi Twitter feed ]
Recommended
by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog
individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the
reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment