Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Publication Date: March 3, 2020

Publisher: William Morrow

Pages: 288

Genre: Mystery

Rating: 5/5

This is my most anticipated read of the year so of course I ran to the bookstore on Tuesday and bought it. I read this in a day and if I could have I would have read it all in one sitting. Swanson has written a love story for the mystery genre and I loved every second of reading it. This book is a fictional memoir the main character, Malcom, wrote regarding the FBI investigation into several murders that are seemingly connected to a blog post that he wrote years ago called Eight Perfect Murders. Malcom starts to suspect that the killer might be tied to events in his past so he begins an investigation of his own.

Mystery is my favorite genre so I was completely captivated by how much this book is inspired and ultimately an homage to this style of fiction. Beyond the eight books that are in Malcom’s blog post this story also names other iconic or well plotted out mysteries.   Some of the plots in these books are spoiled by Malcolm so read at your own risk. I am purposely trying to be as vague as possible when it comes to the plot of Eight Perfect Murders because I don’t want to ruin your experience of the story. Just know that I now consider Swanson to be a genius mystery writer. I don’t know how he did it but Swanson managed to capture the feeling and/or vibe from all the different books that he mentioned (at least the ones that I have read).

Right now I feel like this might be my favorite book of all time. I recommend this book to everyone but I know my fellow mystery lovers will probably enjoy it more. This is not a thriller and like me you might figure out the ending but I don’t think either of those things ruin the book. In fact I enjoyed seeing what Swanson was doing and he still did manage to throw a couple of surprises in there that I didn’t see coming. I also appreciated that my favorite mystery writer, the late Sue Grafton, was name dropped in this book. She is who started my love of this genre and her alphabet series will forever mean so much to me. If you have never read those than I also highly recommend them. I have plans to read every mystery that is mentioned in this book and I also will be rereading Eight Perfect Murders many times in my life.

~Cassie