The Eighth Detective

A New York Times Top Ten Thriller of 2020

＂One of the most innovative mysteries in recent memory.＂ - The Wall Street Journal

＂Dizzying, dazzling... 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

There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective.

Grant McAllister, an author of crime fiction and professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out publishing seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate the rules of murder. But that was thirty years ago. Now he’s living a life of seclusion on a quiet Mediterranean island - until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. His early work is being republished and together the two of them must revisit those old stories. An author, hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it.

But as she reads the stories, Julia is unsettled to realize that there are parts that don’t make sense. Intricate clues that seem to reference a real murder. One that’s remained unsolved for thirty years...

If Julia wants answers, she must triumph in a battle of wits with a dangerously clever adversary. Alex Pavesi’s The Eighth Detective is a love letter to classic detective stories with a modern twist, where nothing is as it seems, and proof that the best mysteries break all the rules.

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