April 15-18
"Fiendish good fun." —Anthony Horowitz
From the hugely talented author of Before She Knew Him comes 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.
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. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.
But 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. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. There is 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.
To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.
Review: This book was awesome it was definitely a Rollercoaster of a book this book is about Mal who owns a mystery bookstore and one day the FBI need to ask him some questions about a list he made years ago for the site called eight perfect murders and there have been murders following his list and they need to find out who is doing it and it may be someone Mal knows. Mal has a past know one knows about he hired someone to do a strangers on the train murder he would kill the person they want and they would kill the person Mal wants . Man's wife was a drug addict and was cheating on him and she got killed in a car crash but he wanted the man dead so that's where this other guy who is now killing others comes in . Mal must find out who it is. He asks his former cop friend to look into a guy who he thinks did it but then he goes to see the guy who he thinks is the killer but he turns up dead also . Then he goes to his friend and part owner of the bookstore Brian and Tess's house I was so sure it was Tess but she just wanted to sleep with Mal it was Marty the cop he got a taste of killing after killing the guy Mal wanted him to kill but Mal kills him then calls Gwen and tells her everything and then leaves to kill himself I wasn't fond of the ending but other than that I loved this book.
Quotes : Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself.
I ran my thumb along the edge of the book, riffling the pages, and that musty, prickly smell of an old paperback reached my nostrils. I’ve always loved that smell,
We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths. The clothes we wear cover the truth of our bodies, but they also present who we want to be to the world. They are fabrications, figuratively and literally.