“I’m a full-time writer,” he explains, “and I spend half my day writing and the other half taking a long walk somewhere. Swanson says the idea for the book and its titular list bubbled up to the surface when he was walking around Walden Pond, not far from his home. As the days pass and the pages turn, he becomes ever more paranoid everyone he encounters seems a reasonable suspect, every plotline a complex yet viable real-life scenario. He maintains his evening rituals (music, beer, poetry) and daytime duties (managing staff, reshelving, feeding the bookstore cat) as he rereads the mysteries from his original blog post in search of clues. He’s flattered that an FBI agent would seek his help, but also increasingly worried that she’ll find out he’s keeping secrets or, even worse, decide he’s a suspect.

There’s wind and snow and a truly chilling feeling of impending doom taking root in his heart. Mal’s life is in a decidedly wintry season. Read our review of Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson. It’s got narrow streets, high hills, cobblestones-that gothic mystery feel. When conjuring up Eight Perfect Murders, Swanson says he instantly gravitated toward Beacon Hill, “the beautiful section of Boston I live in. . . . Thus far, all of Swanson’s books have been set in New England, where he grew up, went to college and now lives. Eight Perfect Murders is his sixth book (and he’s got a couple more in the works). That was The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, published in 2014. I didn’t try my hand at a novel until I was deep into my 30s and didn’t get an agent until I was in my 40s, for the fourth book I’d written.” “I’ve definitely had a lifelong love of reading, and I was always doing a little writing on the side. . . .

Like Mal, author Peter Swanson has a nigh encyclopedic knowledge of mysteries, thanks to his own years spent working in bookstores. murders in crime fiction history,” a post that now seems to be serving as a checklist for a murderer whom Gwen must stop before he strikes again. Years ago, Mal wrote a blog post about “the cleverest, the most ingenious, the most foolproof . . . Mal’s home is austere, his routines simple, his days mostly ordinary.īut then: FBI agent Gwen Mulvey shows up at the store to ask about three homicides reminiscent of those in Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C. He’s a constant reader and recommender of the genre and, after many years as a bookseller, now co-owns Old Devils Bookstore along with a mystery author. Malcolm “Mal” Kershaw’s days are steeped in mystery.

Eight perfect murders by peter swanson