Eight Perfect Murders: A Novel (Malcolm Kershaw)

This was fun and just convoluted enough.

I loved this book! I honestly was guessing the whole time. This! This right here is what more thriller/mystery writers should be doing! I'm honestly still second guessing whether the ending is reliable or not. Swanson does a great job as setting the stage, planting little doubts here and there, making you think the whole time. I honestly didn't see much of what happened coming. I also love the references to other books within in the book. OH! OH! AND THE LITTLE CAMEO! OMG so clever. There's so much to unpack here, I really need someone to talk to about this book. But read it first!

Easy fun read with some good twists

This novel tells the story of a man called Malcom who works as a librarian in his own book shop, Old Devils, in Sommerville, Boston. He has a very normal and structured life, but in one of those slow morning in which he thinks no customers are coming into his store to shop, he is surprised by the visit of a FBI agent called Gwen Mulvey, who asks him about a blog he used to write in when he was younger. This blog has a specific list of books, called “Eight Perfect Murders”, in which Mal writes about his favorite crime novels and how all those cases, through his eyes, are the perfect way to get away with a killing. But Gwen Mulvey isn’t at Old Devils searching for the perfect book to read while she’s enjoying her stay in Boston. She’s talking to Malcom because that list is considered an essential lead for a series of crimes that have been committed during the previous four months, that follow the exact steps of the stories being told in those crime novels. Together, Mal and Gwen are going to try to discover who the killer is, as well as his motives for the killings and for that list. My thoughts on this book are positive. I have really enjoyed the writing style and language of the author, as well as the settings, characters and plot of the book. Even as it's not a very “character driven” novel, the characters always play an essential part for me and in this case, I was pretty invested in their stories. The character of Mal was more complex than what it seemed like at the start, and as soon as the first revealing about his past was made, I was waiting impatiently for the next plot twist. In relation to Gwen, I really liked her character, and she was one of the things that kept me reading, but I do have to say her linking of the books and the crimes seemed somewhat of a stretch to me at times. Maybe because I can’t relate to how good she is at connecting data, but I was very amazed and sometimes skeptical about how fast and how strong she made the connections seem. Even with this being true, I was very happy about the ending, and couldn’t have guessed who the killer was, which I’m still deciding whether I liked it or not. I hate knowing who the killer is since the start of the novel, but I also didn’t really like that the character didn’t have enough exposure in the narrative for me to even consider him as a suspect. Overall, I really liked the book, and I would recommend reading it when you are only starting to read mystery or read in general.

Wow. That was a wild ride! A bookstore owner who is a widower gets tapped out by an FBI agent because of a list of 8 perfect murders that he wrote for a blog. He tries to help, but it quickly is obvious that he is hiding something ...from all of us. The story is told through some flashbacks but mostly occurs during a Boston winter. Throughout the book are myriad literary allusions, even to actual name dropping of books, poems and movies. These mentions are really fun and undoubtedly will end up on my TBR!