Discover this year's most original mystery that will have you guessing until the very last page...

SUNDAY TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH

'Alex Pavesi knows the genre inside out. One of the year's most entertaining crime novels' SUNDAY TIMES

'When did you last read a genuinely original thriller? The wait is over.' A. J. Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

'I couldn't put Eight Detectives down . . . I genuinely wanted to applaud at the end' Alex North, bestselling author of The Whisper Man

All murder mysteries follow a simple set of rules. Grant McAllister, an author of crime fiction and professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out.

But that was thirty years ago. Now he's living a life of seclusion on a quiet Mediterranean island - until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor, knocks on his door. His early work is being republished and together the two of them must revisit those old stories: an author, hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it.

But as she reads, Julia is unsettled to realise that there are things in the stories that don't make sense. Intricate clues that seem to reference a real murder, one that's remained unsolved for thirty years.

If Julia wants answers, she must triumph in a battle of wits with a dangerously clever adversary. But she must tread carefully: she knows there's a mystery, but she doesn't yet realise there's already been a murder . . .