Oh wow, what a treat this book was! I adore detective fiction and this was just one big love letter to it. Eight Detectives is the story of an old crime author named Grant McAllister and a young editor named Julia. Years ago he published an academic essay on the mathematical formula for writing murder mysteries, accompanied by several short stories as examples of this formula. It had little success but Julia has rediscovered this collection and wishes to publish them again, expecting a much more successful run. As she reads through the stories though, she begins to find hidden references to an unsolved murder and she suspects something sinister may be going on.
The format of this book made it a joy to read. It alternates between one of the short stories, followed by Grant and Julia discussing it afterwards. Each short story is brilliant within its own right and many have homages to famous detective fiction (for example, one is essentially a twist on Christie's And Then There Were None). All homages are acknowledged within text by Grant and so this prevented the stories from just being rip-offs, and all the stories had their own flavour and energy which made for delightful reading.
These stories on their own would make this book great but amazingly, there is a fantastic plot beyond them. Julia soon starts to spot inconsistencies in Grant's stories and these begin to add up to a bigger mystery. The whole thing is clever, delicious and fantastically done. I simultaneously wanted to power through this book and languish in the sheer brilliance of it all. I kept waiting to be disappointed but I never was. And this book actually scared me at several points as well! I am rarely scared by books but a few of the short stories truly unnerved me to the point where I didn't want to be alone.
Overall, this book is a must-read for any fans of murder mysteries. The love for genre spills onto every page and the result is possibly one of my favourite books of all time. Everything is crafted so carefully and executed so well. Pavesi has some serious talent to hit the balance so well and I could not have wished for more from a book like this.
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