The Eighth Detective

Mystery fiction presents an interesting challenge. There are certain conventions or "rules" governing the genre—including a literal set of ten commandments (and another ruleset double that)—and yet, from one point of view, the ultimate goal is to surprise and shock the reader, while remaining within the "rules." Obviously, no one is putting a gun to someone's head to obey these rules (well, maybe in a story they do), and some of mystery fiction's most famous and celebrated works break these conventions. So they're more like guidelines. There's no reason you can't just say a wizard did it, but doing that will result in an unsatisfying resolution. (Usually.)

The Eighth Detective is a short story collection that aims to expand the "rules" of mystery fiction by providing a comprehensive definition of a murder mystery and a series of stories that illustrate this definition. It's pretty underwhelming. I think this is because the central conceit suffers from a critical flaw: the formula that The Eighth Detective is built around tells you whether a piece of fiction is a murder mystery or not, but has absolutely nothing to say about whether it's good.

Within The Eighth Detective, the formula was developed by a mathematician named Grant McAllister, who wrote a short story collection called The White Murders to highlight his definition. The White Murders was basically a failure, and McAllister retired to a small island in the Mediterranean. Decades later, a woman named Julia rediscovers The White Murders, and goes to visit McAllister with the prospect of revising and re-publishing The White Murders. The entirety of The Eighth Detective consists of alternating segments of a story from The White Murders and then a discussion between the two characters about the story and how it fits into McAllister's murder mystery formula.

As I said, the book is underwhelming. The stories are largely mediocre. There are basically zero clues, so the "solution" to each story seems entirely arbitrary, which makes the whole experience feel pointless. Cluing and quality don't factor into McAllister's formula whatsoever, and it shows. I don't really care if I'm reading a murder mystery or not. I care about whether I'm reading a good murder mystery. There was only story I'd say I "liked," and even then I like it more as a black comedy than a mystery.

Pavesi, the real-life author, actually is a mathematician himself, like McAllister. But I think he tried a bit too hard to tie math and mysteries together, and explicitly trying to follow a formula leaves the stories dry and hollow. I'm fairly certain that Pavesi is a mystery geek—some of the stories in The Eighth Detective are obvious homages to famous novels, and why else would he become a mystery novelist and spend the time and energy coming up with the formula—but that passion just doesn't translate into quality. Or maybe these stories are truly fantastic from Pavesi's point of view, and I just seek different things from the genre than he does.

There is some fun to be had in The Eighth Detective. Each story has a sort-of "Easter egg" hidden inside it, and it's enjoyable discovering each story's secret. It's entertaining to think and theorize about the stories as you read, even if you know that the answer will ultimately be arbitrary.

And then we have the ending. The ending recontextualizes each story—but usually to its detriment. There are a few bits and pieces improved by the ending, but more often than not I felt it made things worse. It's pretty obvious what Pavesi was going for here, but it just doesn't have any impact. If this ending came after a different set of stories written in a different style it could have been amazing, but here it merits little more than a shrug. I could see someone using the ending to justify the main complaints I've levied against The Eighth Detective, but in my mind it's the opposite: the ending proves the faults I've described are truly there, and in turn are the reason the ending falls flat.

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but it's actually an indirect plot point that The White Murders is mediocre. Unfortunately, that small point of amusement is not nearly enough to make The Eighth Detectives worth reading.