Julia Hart, a smart young editor, has travelled to a remote island to convince Grant McAllister, a reclusive murder mystery writer and professor of mathematics, to republish his collection of detective novels.
Upon questioning the author about his crime novel rules: There must be a victim, a suspect, a detective and reading through each story, Julia picks up on several inconsistencies and certain similarities to an unsolved real life crime. It soon becomes apparent that their is more to Grant McAllister than just the mysteries, that he has written and that Julia may have stumbled across a mystery of her own to solve..

I'm going to try and not give anything away as Eight Detectives is an incredibly clever book, with a plot full of uncertainty, shifty characters, crime and who done it moments, that allows it's reader to play detective! I loved that there were seven brilliant short murder mystery stories, within the overall story and that the plot unravelled slowly, leading up to the big reveal. The ending proved my suspicions that I would make a terrible detective as I DID NOT see it coming! If you're a fan of Agatha Christie's novels, you seriously need to have this book in your tbr pile.

What a cracking debut!

This was a little different to what I am used to reading, and took me a while to get into the book. Different stories that intertwined with the main story, which I found unusual at first, but was an enjoyable read.

I'm afraid that i really didn't enjoy this book. I found it such hard going it took me several weeks to read and eventually i had to skim read the final 20% just to reach the end. Sorry, but it did nothing for me.

I really liked the concept of this one and so went into it with high hopes which, sadly, were not quite realised. Each individual short detective story had its merits (my favourite being the one on the island, even though I did guess the killer) but none of them were great works of detective fiction, all were along similar lines and I felt the interactions between Grant and Julia in between the reading of the short stories weren't developed enough and so as a whole the novel started to feel bitty and disjointed. There were a couple of surprises towards the end of the book but that lack of development earlier also limited the impact of these on the reader.

The 'real life' (to the characters) murder which Julia seemed so determined to bring up at every opportunity was also not covered in enough depth and so I didn't really engage with Julia's fixation with that cold case and the links which she kept trying to make between The White Murders and the White murder. For something that seemed to be such a big part of the plot, we didn't get much detail about it at all. Without the connection to the victim and in the absence of the pool of suspects like those present in each of the short stories, the reader's desire to see the crime solved is reduced.

You certainly get value for money in this book, as it contains several murder mysteries wrapped up in a mystery of its own. Probably the most unique murder mystery book I have ever read a true rival to Agatha Christie.

Grant McAllister wrote the murder mysteries 30 years ago and now Julia is the editor sent to talk to him at his home on a Mediterranean island. Her editor is considering publishing them, but first Julia has more than a few questions about the mysteries.

The book begins with one of the mysteries that Grant has written, this wasn't at first apparent and was my first experience of feeling wrong footed with this book. It then becomes apparent that Julia is interviewing Grant about the stories and presenting to him her findings of clues she thinks are hidden in the mysteries. The book proceeds with each of the mysteries followed by Julia and Grant discussing them.

I loved the actual mysteries which were a mixture of Agatha Christie and Lawrence Block styles. The setting for the mysteries is the 1930/40s and you get a real feel for being in another time, very unlike today. I also enjoyed Julia's observations and Grant's mathematical take on constructing murder mysteries. Unfortunately the explanation of the construction each time started to be too much for me, and indeed Julia herself pronounced them as "exhausting", which was just how I was feeling by this point.

I had certainly realised it was a clever novel by this point (maybe too clever for me?), but with so many stories I began to forget what I had read. Whilst it was enjoyable I was a little disillusioned with it. Suddenly with more turns than a corkscrew the book began to be rewritten before my eyes. It was only then I truly saw the genius writing of this book and realised I could give it no less than 5 stars. So my advice would be keep reading, even when you feel you've lost the plot, just read until the end and you will not be disappointed.

Thirty years ago Professor of Mathematics Grant McAllister worked out the set of ‘rules’ that make up a murder mystery. He then wrote a collection of short stories as examples of the various permutations. Now he’s been approached to have the work republished, and Julia Hart has turned up on his isolated little island. She wants to ask about the stories and the theory, of course, but then there’s the personal mystery. Why did he abruptly leave his life and seek out isolation? Why do the inconsistencies in the stories have a theme?

I was totally intrigued by this book. The alternating chapters of detective story followed by discussion of the tale works well, especially after the opening story. It was fascinating, but quite stylised and yes, with those (plot point) inconsistencies, and not at first realising it was a tale-within-a-tale I wasn’t sure it was going to work. In a short story? More than fine! More so, even, when the discussion starts.

The short stories are good, very reminiscent of Agatha Christie – indeed, in-book the connections are mentioned. A few will therefore seem quite familiar, but they are kept very brief – the proposed in-book publication would have been very slender! Once you know about those ‘purposeful’ inconsistencies, too, it becomes a little puzzle: read a short story, spot the issue that’s going to be revealed straight away.

I also really liked this idea that there a … not formula, but set of rules that make a murder mystery. The mathematics aren’t dense or particularly important to fully follow, but have to say, set theory, Venn diagrams – right up my alley! 🙂

However, the thing that then raises the book is the mystery in the framing tale, which you sense very early on has a whole other layer. The combination was going to score very highly from me – I loved the read, and the explanations – but somehow the ending didn’t quite work for me. It’s not bad by any means, but there’s a convolution or two too many, and the lack of tightness or as much impact as it could have had feels like it lets the rest down just a little.

Still, I recommend, particularly for fans of old-school mysteries, and anyone with an interest in the building blocks of writing.

Note: this book was published as The Eighth Detective in the US.

An intriguing collection of murder mysteries in a clever frame. 4/5 stars.

In Eight Detectives we are given a series of seven short murder mystery stories strung together by a unifiying narrative device.

And I liked the unifying device, as Julia and Grant talk about the book he wrote years ago, very much. It was clever and intriguing, including the use of mathematics to explain the various permutations of the plots. When the final twists are revealed (and there are quite a few!), I was impressed by just how much work had gone into the small details needed to set them all up.

I liked the seven different stories to varying degrees. My favourite was the take on And Then There Were None, which was very imaginative and downright creepy in places.

I would say this book is for fans of classic murder mysteries. And by that I mean murder mysteries where character, feeling and motive are almost unimportant; the puzzle is what keeps us turning the pages. As a result, there is some incredibly gruesome stuff in these stories which is recounted almost entirely without emotion. And I found that this detachment also kept me at arm's length. At least in Christie there's often some humour and it's possible to grow quite attached to some of her detectives who are allowed to develop personality.

Overall: if you prefer murder mysteries with a splash of character development and emotional drama, I wouldn't immediately recommend Eight Detectives. On the other hand, if you're a fan of classic murder mysteries and enjoy a good puzzle, I would say you'll find it intriguing and should give it a try.

This was a lot of short murder mysteries peeled back to reveal how each could be easily solved of enough attention is paid. I really enjoyed this one and felt like I was being taught to look at things like Sherlock Holmes would! ⁣

This book ranks between a 3 and a 4 for me. I appreciate the tipping of the hat to the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie, and the level of complexity in the story. But, the complexity also felt overly involved, too much so. Reading the seven mysteries nested within the overarching narrative was intriguing, and well done, but revisiting each story and discussing various detailed elements at length later was a bridge too far and made the journey from then on feel more difficult than it was meant to be. I applaud the bandwidth necessary to pull off so many twisty labyrinth-inspired mysteries but this just didn't suit me overly much, I'm sorry.

This is a clever take on a murder mystery, you have seven short stories in the vein of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes interspersed by a longer story where we see Julia talking with the author of the short stories and discussing the mathematics behind the writing of a murder mystery.
The points raised in these discussions were very clever and the short stories are used as examples. I enjoyed some of the short stories more than others, but found parts of the main story a bit repetitive as points were hammered home about sections in the short stories.
I also do not think we saw enough of the two main characters to gain a connection with them so it left me feeling very removed from the book when reading.
The main story was cleverly written and did keep me guessing and I think fans of murder mysteries and detective stories in general will like this one.

I really expected to like this book but in the end it left me cold. The basic premise is interesting, the idea of what makes a satisfying murder mystery, but to me it read more as a treatise than a novel and I felt strangely uninvolved.

I typically love thrillers/murder mysteries, so I read a lot of them, the downside of this is that they often tend to get very same-y. As is with any genre there are common conventions or tropes that are kind of over-used. But Eight Detectives is completely original!!! I’m in awe of the author for coming up with such a unique and captivating concept and the whole time I was reading it (I raced through it in one day!) I was genuinely just so excited to be reading something so innovative! ⁣⁣
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The structure of this book involved 7 short stories, each contained and following the plot of a murder mystery, and each an example of one of ‘the rules’ of crime fiction, as outlined by Grant McCallister. I absolutely loved reading these short stories as they upheld the pace of the book brilliantly, there was not one moment when I thought the plot was lacking or any information that felt like a filler. ⁣⁣⁣
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Some of the stories were pretty terrifying, and one in particular (I won’t spoil anything) was too scary for me at one point. I had to put it down and watch an episode of Friends before continuing hahaha. I’m desperate to read more books like this, because the way the whole book was brought together in the end had me absolutely gobsmacked, I can’t give it enough praise.⁣⁣⁣
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Eight Detectives is unlike anything else you’ll ever read, it’s brilliantly innovative but reminiscent of the best murder mysteries of years past. Simply put, it’s a must read.

Different in many ways from most current detective novels.
Grant McAllister , maths professor wrote ‘a guide’ to detective fiction and seven short stories to demonstrate this over 30 years ago. He now lives on a Mediterranean island and is visited by a young editor from a small publisher Julia Hart who want to reprint the stories. She reads the stories and finds inconsistencies and she tries to work out what these mean - she is as the book’s title suggests ‘The 8th Detective.’
It is a clever, well written book but was a struggle for me to finish as the focus was too much on the old stories and not on what Julia was really trying to find out - had McAllister killed someone himself.
A clever idea but am still not sure if I enjoyed it.

I absolutely loved this book! It was so refreshingly different! A brilliant plot and very well executed.

Its stories within a story and nothing is what it seems. If you love working out riddles and want to practice being a good sleuth this is a must-read. I found the mathematical approach also very interesting.

There are 7 different murder mysteries to unravel in this book and I kept going back to see where I missed the clues. Its also stories with a lot of misdirection and inconsistencies that was put there on purpose.
For a good murder mystery you need 4 ingredients:
1 - a group of suspects
2 - a victim or a group of victims
3 - a detective of a group of detectives
4- a killer or group of killers

You find all of these in the 8 stories.
And in the end......how do these fictional stories link up to a real-life murder......

"In even the most innocent scenes there is darkness to be found at the corners"

I will definitely read this again with the knowledge I have now after finishing it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK, Michael Joseph for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

The initial idea of this appealed to me but I found the fact they were short stories where you didn't get to know any of the characters - it was mainly about getting across a different crime method or genre tick box - that I lost impetus and did not finish this.
The segments in between that linked the stories were also intriguing and were obviously going to lead to a revelation at the end with regards to the author, but it didn't grip me enough to want to continue.

Others have given this book very positive reviews, so I feel it was just me and how I was feeling at the time.

This is a book that I have been much anticipating and I’m so pleased to say that it absolutely lived up to my expectations!

Eight Detectives is different to anything I’ve read before. It follows Julia Hart, an editor for an independent publisher, who is staying with author Grant McAllister, a maths professor who many years ago wrote a short story collection to show how all murder mysteries are based on mathematic equations.

The novel was discombobulating in the beginning as you find yourself reading the first story in Grant’s collection. I was expecting to meet Julia first but I was delighted to be wrong-footed. The first story is engaging and intriguing, and a bit creepy – which sets the reader up for a brilliant novel. After each short story Julia and Grant discuss them and what she has noticed about them.

The short stories are very Agatha Christie-esque and all are set in the 1930s so if you like those then I think you’ll love this novel. The whole novel is a mystery and it all interconnects; it really is very clever and engaging. Julia Hart is a brilliant character, I loved following her in this book!

There is so much in this novel that I can’t write about as it’s definitely a book that works best by throwing yourself into it knowing very little. It really is such a clever, intriguing and ultimately very satisfying read. I highly recommend it!

I had very high expectations of Alex Pavesi’s The Eighth Detective/Eight Detectives, I was imagining something like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton – an intelligent and well-crafted mystery story. Eight Detectives is very different from what I was expecting – the book alternates between an over aching plot and 8 short stories of murder/mystery as an editor interviews their author about the equation for a great murder mystery.

Although I really enjoyed some of the stories (the house on the island in particular), there were some I enjoyed less and so all of the pitfalls of an anthology were present in this book as well. The pacing was off as the stories I enjoyed I raced through and the ones I didn’t I felt like they dragged. With the one about the elderly aunt and her jewellery I actually started skimming which was a mistake for later on in the book! The little discrepancies that Julia notices were buried a little too deeply for me to notice and it would have perhaps been better if they were slightly obvious from the initial reading. I did really like how the book pulled all of the stories together at the end though and it was very clever and showed how well constructed the book was.

I would have perhaps wanted a little more of the through-line plot - we only got the chapters with Julia and Grant discussing the books and then at the end it all felt a little rushed. It got to about 85-90% of the book before that plot really started to get going and I would have enjoyed a little expansion on it.

Overall, Eight Detectives is a good anthology of murder mysteries, with enough to cleverly pull them together at the end, however I would have enjoyed a bit more expansion on the main story line. Thank you to NetGalley & Penguin UK – Michael Joseph for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Describing this as a thrilling read is something of a misnomer, but it is most certainly the kind of clever story that reveals itself slowly and which had me hooked from the outset.
We’re told that a mathematician, Grant McAllister, published an article that explored a clear set of rules to which detective stories must adhere. Based on this idea he published a book called The White Murders, a series of seven short stories examining these theories, but has not written anything since. A recluse, living on a remote Mediterranean island, so it is naturally exciting to learn that an editor is visiting Mr McAllister with the view to publishing a new copy of his work.
Our editor, Julia Hart, is the character who frames this story. We’re told she is sent to help Mr McAllister to edit his work so she reads each story aloud to him before they discuss it. The repetitive structure to this shouldn’t work, but it does...and is central to the success of The Eighth Detective.
What we learn after the first story reading is that each of these seven stories includes some unusual detail. It doesn’t necessarily affect the story, but there is something in each that seems incongruous- and we know it’s important, though we’re not sure to what.
As we listen to the individual stories and Julia’s discussion of them with the author, it is clear that each inconsistency is a clue. I was desperate to work this out and found myself eagerly taking apart each of the stories within the story to try and establish which element had been altered.
I was expecting something odd - and we can tell from quite early on that the title of the book is important (both the fictional book and the book we’re reading) - but I felt like the author had performed an amazing sleight of hand when we finally had the reveal.
This was a clever book, and one which would certainly stand up to rereading and closer examination. I enjoyed it immensely and even though some of the coincidences/tricks used were not wholly plausible and I would have liked to see the characters within our present story fleshed out a little more fully, I enjoyed this so much it has to be a five star rating.
I’m very grateful to the publishers, Michael Joseph, and NetGalley for letting me offer my thoughts on this prior to publication and I will certainly be getting my own copy of it to reread in the not too distant future.

This is an engaging book created around a conversation between a publicist and an author, about crime fiction writing. Interjected throughout the novel are individual short crime stories, with varying outcomes that relate to the linked discussion of what elements create the murder mystery genre. I really enjoyed all the story elements, and the opening book was very play like.
It's a well plotted novel that certainly pays homage to the genre and it cleverly crafted.
Enjoyable and original; a brain workout for murder mystery enthusiasts - recommended.

I’ve heard so much about this book and I really wanted to like it, but after 5 stories I just found it exhausting.

Julia Hart is interviewing Grant McAllister about seven short stories he wrote over 30 years ago to put a commentary with them in a compilation. She has to read each one to him out loud and you as a reader are reading them with her. But this many short stories is quite hard going. You’ve just got your head round one and then another one starts. The commentary is pointing out inconsistencies in each of these and is leading to them being linked together, but I didn’t get that far and the mystery was not compelling enough to keep me hooked. There should have been more of the mystery and less of the short stories. And when it got to explaining murder mysteries with Venn diagrams, I switched off.

The stories themselves are well written, there were just too many of them to keep me interested I’m afraid.