For anyone who enjoys good mystery fiction, Eight Perfect Murders is a good one.
It opens when the narrator, Malcolm Kershaw, gets a visit from an FBI agent making an impromptu visit to Mr. Kershaws' book store to discuss a blog post he wrote years earlier listing eight books which involved what he called perfect murders -- crimes with so few clues that they were virtually unsolvable. It seems that a serial killer might be using the creative techniques in those books to commit his/her own unsolvable crimes.
Here's a reproduction of said blog post:
EIGHT PERFECT MURDERS
by Malcolm Kershaw
In the immortal words of Teddy Lewis in Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan's underrated neo-noir from 1981: "Any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius . . . and you ain't no genius." True words, yet the history of crime fiction is littered with criminals, mostly dead or incarcerated, who all attempted the near impossible: the perfect crime. And many of them attempted the ultimate perfect crime, that being murder.
The following are my choices for the cleverest, the most ingenious, the most foolproof (if there is such a thing) murders in crime fiction history. These are not my favorite books in the genre, nor do I claim these are the best. They are simply the ones in which the murderer comes closest to realizing that platonjc ideal of a perfect murder.
So here it is, a personal list of "perfect murders." I'll warn you in advance that while I try to avoid major spoilers, I wasn't one hundred percent successful. If you haven,t read one of these books, and want to go in cold, I suggest reading the book first, and my list second.
The Red House Mystery (1922) by A. A. Milne
Long before Alan Alexander Milne created his lasting legacy -- Winnie- the-Pooh, in case you hadn't heard -- he wrote one perfect crime novel. It's a country house mystery; a long-lost brother suddenly appears to ask Mark Ablett for money. A gun goes off in a locked room, and the brother is killed. Mark Ablett disappears. There is some preposterous trickery in this book-including characters in disguise, and a secret passage-but the basic fundamentals behind the murderer's plan are extremely shrewd.
Malice Aforethought (1931) by Anthony Berkeley Cox
Famous for being the first "inverted" crime novel (we know who the murderer and victim are on the very first page), this is essentially a case study in how to poison your wife and get away with it. It helps, of course, that the murderer is a country physician with access to lethal drugs. His insufferable wife is merely his first victim, because once you commit a perfect murder the temptation is to try another one.
The A.B.C. Murders (1936) by Agatha Christie
Poirot is investigating a "madman" who, it appears, is alphabetically obsessed, killing off Alice Ascher in Andover followed by Betty Barnard in Bexhill. Etcetera. This is the textbook example of hiding one specific premeditated murder among a host of others, hoping that the detective will suspect the work of a lunatic.
Double Indemnity (1943) by James M. Cain
This is my favorite Cain, mostly because of the grim fatalistic ending. But the murder at the center of the book -- an insurance agent plots with femme fatale Phyllis Nirdlinger to off her husband-is brilliantly executed. It's a classic staged murder; the husband ls killed in a car then placed on the train tracks to make it look as though he fell off thee smoking car at the rear of the train. Walter Huff, her insurance agent lover, impersonates the husband on the train, ensuring that witnesses will attest to the murdered man's presence.
Strangers on a Train (1950) by Patricia Highsmith
My pick for the most ingenious of them all. Two men, each with some one they want dead, plan to swap murders, ensuring that the other has an alibi at the time of the murder. Because there is zero connection between the two men -- they briefly talk on a train - the murders become unsolvable. in theory, of course. And Hlghsmith, despite the brilliance of the plot, was more interested in the ideas of coercion and guilt, of one man exerting his will on the other. The finished novel is both fascinating and rotten to the core, like most of Highsmith's oeuvre.
The Drowner (1963) by John D. MacDonald
MacDonald, my choice for underrated master of midcentury crime fiction, rarely dabbled in whodunits. He was far too interested in the criminal mind to keep his villains hidden until the end. The Drowner is an outlier, then, and a good one. The killer devises a way to drown his or her victims so that it looks exactly Ike an accident.
Deathtrap (1978) by Ira Levin
Not a novel, of course, but a play, although I highly recommend reading it, along with seeking out the excellent 1982 film. you,ll never look at Christopher Reeve in the same way again. It's a brilliant, funny stage thriller that manages to be both the genuine article, and a satirical one, at the same time. The first murder -- a wife with a weak heart -- is clever in its construction, but also foolproof. Heart attacks are a natural death, even when they aren't.
The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
Like Malice Aforethought, another "inverted" murder mystery, in which a small cadre of classics students at a New England university kill one of their own. We know the who long before we know the why. The murder itself is simple in its execution; Bunny Corcoran is pushed into a ravine during his traditional Sunday hike. What makes it stand out is ringleader Henry Winter,s explanation of the crime -- that they are "allowing Bunny to choose the circumstances of his own death." They are not even sure of his planned route for that day but wait at a likely spot, wanting to make the death seem random instead of designed. What follows is a chilling exploration of remorse and guilt.
Eight Perfect Murders is relatively short, and at the end I was left wishing it would go on. The book selling websites call this the 1st "Malcolm Kershaw" book which hints that there may more in this series by Peter Swanson. Let's hope.
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4:15 PM 3/27/2021
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