I had to begin to protect myself.īooks are time travel. I was sure she was withholding information from me, so I planned on withholding this information from her. I knew I should have told Agent Mulvey this at the time, but I didn’t, and until I felt I had to, I didn’t plan on telling her. In the end, the blog piece got two comments. NPR would call and ask me to come on-air to discuss the very topic. I waited for comments to appear, allowing myself brief fantasies in which the piece would start an online frenzy, blog readers chiming in to argue about their own favorite murders. I think I must have had some delusions of grandeur that my blog platform might turn me into a public and trusted aficionado of crime fiction. “Do you remember a list you wrote for this store’s blog, back in 2004? A list called ‘Eight Perfect Murders’?” She unzipped her leather bag and removed a single sheet of paper. Was it just because I owned a mystery bookstore? Did she need a copy of the book? But if that were the case, then why did she ask for me, specifically, on the phone? If she just wanted someone who worked in a mystery bookstore, then she could have come inside and talked with anyone. I was starting to wonder why she had come to me. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead-and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. and sees a killer in everyone around him. To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects. The killer is out there, watching his every move-a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.

And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. īut no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.

Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack-which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”-chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. A chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.

Book eight perfect murders