The Mathematics of Murder (The Eighth Detective mystery novel REVIEW)

I’m about to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done before (and writing this during a global pandemic, when my city has already been under lockdown for more than four months, that’s really sayin’ something). I’m going to recommend a book I basically hated.

“Wait, you’re gonna whuh..??”, right? Believe me, I. Know. Just bear with me for a few, and we’ll get there… via Alex Pavesi’s The Eighth Detective.
_______________

Grant McAllister—an elderly mathematician who’s been living life as a recluse on a remote island in the middle of the Mediterranean for the last three decades—did something noteworthy, a long time ago… but almost no one on the planet knows what he did.

Julia Hart—an editor for a London publishing company—is one of the few who does… so she flies out to his tiny island with a proposal. Grant wrote and self-published (with a minuscule run) a book back in the early 1940s, shortly before he hied off to the island, in which he laid out precise mathematical formulas that all murder mystery stories must follow, along with seven mysteries he penned specifically to illustrate those formulas. Julia, learning of his long-forgotten work, wants to edit and publish the stories, bringing his concepts to a wider, modern audience and detailing why he virtually disappeared all those years ago.

The fly in the ointment, she soon discovers, is that Grant is not at all what one would call forthcoming… not with talking about his past, nor in explaining what he was thinking when he wrote each of the stories; in other words, he’s not really giving her anything she needs. 

What she decides, then, is to take a different tack; she will read aloud each of the stories in the book—refreshing the older man’s memory, since he insists he hasn’t reread them in all the years he’s been on the island—after which she will question him about his thoughts and motivations.

As she goes through them, Julia spots odd little inconsistencies—some in each story—which Grant pooh-poohs as little inside jokes, solely for his own amusement. But Julia isn’t to be put off so easily; she knows that there must be more to Grant’s story—both his personal one and deeper meanings behind each of the mysteries in his book—which she determines to do a little detective work about, on her own.

_______________

If it sounds like an intriguing-enough twist for a mystery book, then I certainly agree. (That is, after all, the very reason I wanted to read The Eighth Detective.) But… as I mentioned earlier, I basically hated ninety-eight percent of this book.

For one thing, I felt a surprisingly-strong dislike for both of the main characters. Grant was, by design, not really intended to be likable, but Julia didn’t come across that much better; I found her annoying, when she should’ve been the character I could really get behind.

Almost every single character within the individual mysteries was unlikable, as well—from moderately tolerable to thoroughly detestable. (Seriously… never have I read so many short stories in which everyone was so distasteful; it was… disturbing, to say the least.)

The only (and I do mean ONLY) mitigating factor is the ending, when author Pavesi threw in a couple of twists I definitely did not see coming. They were believable enough, and unexpected enough, for me to not be completely disgusted that I’d spent all that time reading something so unenjoyable… but barely. 

So, because of the interesting spin on mystery fiction—and those clever twists at the very end—I’m giving The Eighth Detective a qualified recommendation. Just don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning first.
~GlamKitty

(I received an Advance Reader Copy of The Eighth Detective, in order to read early and share my unbiased opinions on; it will be released in print 4 August 2020.)