Featuring: Jackson Ford, Phoebe Greenwood, James Logan, Alex Pavesi, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Charlotte Runcie, Eric Smith & Andrew Bricker, Maggie Stiefvater, Vladislav Zubok
Alex Pavesi
Quick Review: THE EIGHTH DETECTIVE by Alex Pavesi (Henry Holt / Michael Joseph)
An intriguing mystery novel, quite well executed
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 synopsis for Alex Pavesi’s debut novel caught my attention some time ago, so I jumped at the chance to review it. It’s quite unlike any mystery novel I’ve read before, and with an intriguing premise/structure, it was a pretty good read. Continue reading
New Books (April)
In these uncertain times, books are perhaps more important than ever (at least, they are in my opinion). To that end, I am going to try to publish more content on CR than normal (I know — I’ve “closed” it down a number of times, I just can’t stay away). Below is a list of books I’ve bought or received for review (and one I’m pre-approved for but haven’t downloaded because I know I won’t be able to read the format, but wanted to flag anyway because I’m really looking forward to reading it). As you’ll notice, a few of these aren’t out for some time, but I guess publishers have decided to send them out sooner to give people plenty of time to read them.
Featuring: Robert Jackson Bennett, Tom Bissell, Tom Bradby, Mike Brooks, K.A. Doore, Gardner Dozois, Dan Drezner, Lindsay Ellis, Scott Eyman, Marc Freeman, Ryan Gattis, Grady Hendrix, Stark Holborn, Richard Kadrey, Nicole Krauss, Hari Kunzru, Dinah Lenney, Sam J. Miller, Tamsyn Muir, John Niven, Karen Osborne, Alex Pavesi, Ross Payton, Wayne Santos, Elissa R. Sloan, Jonathan Strahan, Peter Swanson, Michael Swanwick, Breanna Teintze, Don Winslow, Chris Wraight
Upcoming: THE EIGHTH DETECTIVE by Alex Pavesi (Henry Holt/Penguin)
I spotted Alex Pavesi‘s upcoming novel The Eighth Detective a while ago in an online Macmillan catalogue, and made a note to keep an eye open for it — it sounds really interesting, with an intriguing premise. The North American and UK covers recently made their way online, so I thought I’d share some info about it here. Here’s the synopsis for The Eight Detective, which will be published in the UK as Eight Detectives:
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
I’m really looking forward to giving this a try. Alex Pavesi’s debut is due to be published in August in North America by Henry Holt (4th) and Penguin in the UK (20th).
Civilian Reader 