Rules for Perfect Murders: The 'fiendishly good' Richard and Judy Book Club pick

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Very atmospheric, and if this book were a movie, I could picture it being made in “Autochrome Lumiere” (that muted color) as Boston was experiencing a very, snowy Winter throughout this story, and I could picture the cold nights and see the warm glow of lamps, as Mal, And Gwen reread the books on the list, and tried to figure out who the murderer could be... I had fun trying to unravel Mal’s secrets and uncover the web of the eight perfect murders. I highly recommend for those who love the mystery genre. Is there such a thing as a perfect murder? In real life, the answer is probably yes, though how would we know about it? Perfection demands that the murder be unsolvable, maybe even unrecorded – a victim disappearing off the face of the earth, a body never found, a killer never caught. In our world of forensic science and DNA evidence, the perfect murder must be as rare as a reclusive celebrity. It seems, if Special Agent Mallory’s theory is correct, that a killer is using Malcolm’s list to perpetrate similar murders. Crime writers have done all the work for any burgeoning murderer. A summer spent reading the very best of Agatha Christie might be the best research a person with murder on his mind could do. As Malcolm and Claire ponder the evidence, looking for aspects that fit the crimes from the blog list, it starts to become evident to Malcolm that maybe….just maybe...he knows the killer.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Faber & Faber via NetGalley for providing a digital ARC of Rules For A Perfect Murder by Peter Swanson for review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own personal opinions. Swanson maintains the story’s unflagging momentum throughout, and by the time you reach the end, you realise yet another classic mystery is in play. I will let Kershaw himself tell you which it is.

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There's a lot I can't say about Eight Perfect Murders, but I'll try to give you some idea what it's like. I've only read one other Swanson book so far ( Before She Knew Him) and this one was very different. Wow! What do I even say about a book that has rendered me speechless? This book is a thriller lovers dream come true. First of all, Peter Swanson won me over with The Kind Worth Killing and has never let me down since. I find him and Liz Nugent to be the masters of the dark, twisted thrillers. I often wonder how they come up with this stuff! Can you imagine their computer search history? The stuff that murders are made of!!! It has a satisfactory ending which is a little predictable but ties up all the loose ends. Some of the male characters are a little too good to be true but that doesn’t spoil any part of the story. The author switches between the two time periods effortlessly and easily which doesn’t always happen in these kinds of books. Each storyline had a richness that was only strengthened by the comparison and contrast to the other. There are so many characters in this book that it will make your head spin. The one that I really enjoyed was Ms. Mulvaney, the FBI agent who gets in trouble for following her instincts and working along with Mal, but she had her own suspicions about what was going on.

Now a FBI agent appears at his bookstore, asking for his help because there might be killer out there obsessed with his article and commits murders at the same ways written on those books. A graduate of Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College, he lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his wife and cat. Personally, I thought Swanson did a great job with weaving a mystery around the eight novels on Malcolm’s list, showcasing their magnificence, while supplying a sly dose of irony and satire that often made me smile. Mal ends up taking on some leads into the investigation himself. He has to for his own safety. Will this game of cat and mouse ever stop? All I am going to say is that although the pace of this book was a S L O W burn...Mr. Swanson caught me by surprise, MORE than once, again!!Do you need to know about the plots and twists and turns of the books mentioned? No, I don’t think so. I knew some of them, but not others and it didn’t detract from the rest of the book. Okay, gushing about the literary bits over

Peter Swanson’s latest release Rules for Perfect Murders (also released elsewhere as Eight Perfect Murders) is a very clever novel. I notice Anthony Horowitz has offered up a recommendation quote for the cover, which makes sense as it’s reminiscent of his (more traditional crime fiction) work as well. Perhaps my one word of caution here: because EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS delves so deeply into the crimes that take place in each of the eight crime novels on Malcolm’s original blog post, there will be spoilers in this novel for those eight books. If you haven’t read one of the books on Malcolm’s list and are interested in reading it for yourself, I would recommend either reading it before you dive into EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS, or just going into this book knowing that there will be spoilers along the way. Personally, I didn’t have any problem with this—while I haven’t read all eight books on Malcolm’s list, I’ve already read the books from the list that appeal to me on a personal level, and had no issue with reading spoilers of the others through Swanson’s writing. Not only did I love the physical setting of this book (predominantly a crime-fiction focussed bookshop) but I loved the ‘world’ in which this book is set: with Malcolm’s crime novel-loving staff members; obsessive readers; and references to author talks and signings etc.if you're an avid mystery reader, you've probably read at least a few of them, and if you have, you'll be savvy enough to predict a few moves that swanson's book makes, but calling some of them early doesn't diminish the fun of reading it at all; it's like taking a meandering meta journey through mystery's literary history—swanson incorporating elements from several different mystery subgenres before wrapping it all up in one big homage. To me, this book was a celebration of the mystery genre. A laugh at its conventions; a love letter to its best and underappreciated works. Following Malcolm as he tries to piece together the puzzle and come to terms with just how guilty he himself is... well, it's quite a ride.

The blog post in question is still floating around in the internet stratosphere, evidently catching the attention of a fiendish murderer, who is now using Malcolm’s list as a guide, duplicating the methods employed in the eight books on the list. I loved the style of the writing: how the beginning started with “a memoir” and the reader is trying to figure out if they can trust Malcom for the whole story I enjoyed this story although I did get tired of the repeated details of each book. And if you have never read the books and don't want to be spoiled, this is not the book for you. Malcolm is going to totally spoil each book, over and over again. Still, I wanted to find out just what was going on with Malcolm because he seemed to be an unreliable narrator who had a lot he wanted to tell. I also really liked the premise of this book. There have been other books and movies also featuring killers replicating the work of others. Copycat killers. Sometimes they’re just psychotic and keen to kill but want to find a clever way to do it. Here, it seems obvious there’s a link – of some sort – to Malcolm. He eventually suspects what it might be, but realises he’ll have to face up to events of his past if he wants to uncover their identity. The deaths lead FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey to mystery bookshop Old Devils. Owner Malcolm Kershaw had once posted online an article titled 'My Eight Favourite Murders,' and there seems to be a deadly link between the deaths and his list - which includes Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.I guess, by its nature the book is (in fact) a homage to crime fiction – particularly that by some of the greats. It’s twisty and very intelligently written. Indeed it’s very different. It could have been amazing but (though still a good read) I felt it fell slightly short of its potential.