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The Eighth Detective Spiral-Bound | 2020-08-04

Alex Pavesi

$27.39 - Free Shipping
A thrilling, wildly inventive nesting doll of a mystery, in which a young editor travels to a remote village in the Mediterranean in the hopes of convincing a reclusive writer to republish his collection of detective stories, only to realize that there are greater mysteries beyond the pages of books.

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.

The Eighth Detective is a cerebral, inventive novel with a modern twist, where nothing is what it seems, and proof that the best mysteries break all the rules.

Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket
Pages: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 125075593X
Item Weight: 1.1 lbs
Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.0 x 9.6 inches
"Dizzying, dazzling -- a potent potion of a thriller, a brew of bibliophilia (think The Shadow of the Wind), wire-taut tension (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and plot swerves so sharp and sudden you risk whiplash with each turn of the page, as bold as the best of Michael Connelly and Lisa Gardner. When did you last read a genuinely original thriller? The wait is over."
-- A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

"It's rare for me to read a book in a single day, but I couldn't put The Eighth Detective down. Compelling, clever, and beautifully-constructed. It deserves to be huge. I genuinely wanted to applaud at the end."
-- Alex North, New York Times bestselling author of The Whisper Man

"An absolute triumph of a novel. I read it in two greedy gulps. Intelligent and compelling storytelling. Utterly brilliant"
-- Ali Land, bestselling author of Good Me Bad Me

"In The Eighth Detective, Alex Pavesi constructs a remarkable puzzle that turns readers into literary detectives with every new twist. Both a celebration and a reinvention of mystery fiction."
-- Matthew Pearl, New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Chamber and The Dante Club

"So, so clever. A twisty story and an education in the math of murder mysteries. Agatha Christie would take her hat off to this one. Bravo!"
-- Sarah Pinborough, New York Times bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes

"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, International bestselling author of My Lovely Wife

A former bookseller for Waterstones, The Eighth Detective is Alex Pavesi's first book. He holds a PhD in mathematics, and is currently a software engineer for Microsoft in London.