Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

A murder mystery that references Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and whose protagonist is a cat-owning bookstore owner? Count me in! It turns out that life in the book trade is more dangerous than you'd expect. Someone's killing people, evidently using a blogged list of perfect literary crimes as a template, and the list's author, Malcolm Kershaw, is called in by the FBI to lend his expertise. This all seems like a straightforward, if unlikely, series of events plot-wise, but straightforward flies out the window early on as Swanson starts throwing twists at us. And the twists keep coming. It's a good read, with my one caveat being that I felt there were too many names of victims tossed around. I couldn't keep them straight, and I felt it distanced me from the story somewhat. Another consideration is that Strangers on a Train is not the only classic novel mentioned here. Readers who are more familiar with the books on the murderer's list will probably connect more with Swanson's novel. I was only familiar with some of them.