Perfect Murders

Eight Perfect Murders is a psychological thriller and mystery novel by Peter Swanson. The story follows Beacon Hill mystery bookstore owner and recent-ish widow Malcolm Kershaw. He’s a quiet guy – goes to work with his two employees every day, comes home, reads, has a beer, goes to bed, gets up, and does it all over again.

I want to like him.

Then, one extremely cold, snowy, February day, a young FBI agent stops in with questions. It seems there have been murders that might be echoing a blog post he wrote years ago titled, "Eight Perfect Murders.” In that debut post for the store’s website, he listed the top eight trickiest murder mystery/thrillers – the most unsolvable murders. 

These included: 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.

There appears to be a copycat about – someone who’s using Mal’s blog list as a blueprint, a script, a project inspiration site (Instagram for killers). Except shit gets WAY deeper than that. You see, Mal is something I totally fucking despise. Mal is an unreliable narrator.

Was ist das, you ask?

An unreliable narrator can be defined as any narrator who misleads readers, either deliberately or unwittingly. Many are unreliable through circumstances, character flaws or psychological difficulties. In some cases, a narrator withholds key information from readers, or they may deliberately lie or misdirect. (source) 

Confession – once I fully twigged to this (about 45% of the way through the book), I ended up skipping to the end. Yes, despite Eight Perfect Murders being well written, engaging, having a couple likable characters, AND a cat. WHY did I do this? 

My fault (?) – I can’t and will NOT tolerate being lied to. 

There are myriad reasons why people lie.

They lie to cover their shame.

A friend told me they had sent their children to live, temporarily, with their ex (several states away) for a few months because they needed to take care of some general, unspecified issues. A partial truth at best. Child protective services had stepped in and made this choice for them.

People lie because they’re, perhaps, not fully aligned with reality. 

A person I knew and loved told me an elaborate, detailed story about how they lost their job at an eldercare nonprofit which they supposedly created – built from the ground up. The person was completely blindsided – absolutely stunned.

The more they talked the more they contradicted themself. There were SO many gaping holes in the story. They fully believed what they were telling me all while reality was standing there saying "nah babe...sorry, no way." This was an intelligent person but, in certain circumstances, objective reality was beyond their grasp.

People lie for profit and power. Fer instance – Pedo and his Party of fools, sycophants, planet and people rapers, greedheads, thieves, and micro-schwanzed morons, lie with every breath they take.

Some other reasons why people lie:

Sometimes it’s to shield or protect others. Would you lie about Abdullahi Mohamed or Vargas Arellano hiding from ICE in your attic? I sure as fuck would.

“White lies” are theoretically told to spare someone's feelings. Would I? //shrugs// Maybe. It depends. I think I’m more likely to tell the truth as gently as I’m able. This might be how I’ve gotten the rep for being honest – AKA direct, blunt, a stone asshole. //shrugs// Someone's gotta do it.

Lies of omission are committed in order to protect privacy and/or avoid conflict. Sometimes that’s good and necessary. Sometimes that’s chickenshit assholery.

Back to Eight Perfect Murders though – because of this lying shit and me, inevitably, being sparked off into the next dimension by it, I returned the book to the library early. Yes, I read the last chapter and I’m glad I did (no, I won’t give away the ending). Now, NOW I want to know how Mal, the lying little shit, got to that end. I wanna know if his two bookstore employees and the cat (ESPECIALLY the cat) are okay. And what about the FBI agent who seemed like a nice, less buttoned up Agent Scully type. Maybe. 

I might have to get back on the waiting list and take the book out again even though I’m still RILLY pissed off about this lying ass narrator shit.

And now I have Annie Lennox in my head singing Would I Lie to You. THIS is a good thing!