Rules for Perfect Murders: is murderously perfect

What is this about?: Mal Kershaw gets drawn into a murder investigation when the FBI comes knocking about a series of murders based on a list he created for his bookstore’s blogs about his eight favourite murders.

What else is this about?: This is a mystery for book lovers of any kind, peppered with familiar titles and outcomes. Peter Swanson has created a maze in literary form, couple with characters that will essentially make you second guess everything they say. Which is actually what you do want in a murder mystery. So trust no-one, second guess everything and then maybe you might just understand what’s going on before the end of the book. Maybe.

Blurb

If you want to get away with murder, play by the rules

A series of unsolved murders with one thing in common: each of the deaths bears an eerie resemblance to the crimes depicted in classic mystery novels.

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.

Can the killer be stopped before all eight of these perfect murders have been re-enacted?

Let me put it this way: if any one tells you that Rules for Perfect Murders – otherwise known as Eight Perfect Murders – has a brilliant twist you won’t see coming blah blah blah – don’t buy it.

It’s so much better than that.

Rules for Perfect Murders is also filled with book titles you’ll know, endings you’ve probably heard about at some point and it’s filled with love for every single one. It’s going to make you gleeful like you wouldn’t believe, and let’s not forget – Mal is a bookshop owner. Now hands up, who thought that would be the best job ever at one point? I sure did (but with less murder and mayhem).

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

Told from Mal’s perspective, readers are swept along in his narrative as he is approached by an FBI agent, Gwen, and asked for his input regarding a series of murders that seem to be based on a list he once wrote for his bookshop’s blog called Eight Perfect Murders.

Mal is a book nerd, who nonetheless expected to be living a different life from the one he has. He takes us through meeting his wife, Claire, her death and how she shaped and changed him – while at the same time readers are on the journey in the present with him and Gwen as they try to figure out who is copying his favourite murders.

Mal is very matter-of-fact in his telling of this narrative, I thought. I imagined him to have a dry tone even as he relates everything going on because he is beginning to realise he’s not where he wants to be. It’s when he talks about Claire, about their life together that I can feel the anger and love in his words.

As the book progresses go, his retelling of the present begins to take on a tinge of fear as he begins to put pieces together and realises just what is going on — and who is killing people he knows, and more importantly why.

There is more to Mal of course, and the case as a whole, but to go any further would be to spoil a work of love for mysteries, books and the twisty turns what grab us and don’t let us go.