List of All of the Books Mentioned in Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson
“Why does everything need to be a list? What compels us to do that? It was something I’ve been doing ever since I became an obsessed reader.”- Peter Swanson
I just finished Peter Swanson’s latest, Eight Perfect Murders, and couldn’t resist compiling the list of all of books the author mentions in the novel. This is a true mystery lover’s book- Swanson references a lot of the greats in the genre like Agatha Christie and Patricia Hightower and draws inspiration from their books to shape his story. (It is worth noting that if the titular ‘Eight Perfect Murders’ are still on your TBR list, you might want to read them first as plot points are spoiled.)
Here’s the full list!
Eight Perfect Murders
The Red House Mystery (1922)- A.A. Milne
Malice Aforethought (1931)- Francis Iles
The A.B.C. Murders (1936)- Agatha Christie
Double Indemnity (1943)- James Cain
Strangers on a Train (1950)- Patricia Highsmith
The Drowner (1963)- John MacDonald
Deathtrap (1978)- Ira Levin
The Secret History (1992)- Donna Tartt
List of All of the Books Mentioned in Eight Perfect Murders
A is for Alibi- Sue Grafton
The A.B.C. Murders- Agatha Christie
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
And Then There Were None- Agatha Christie
B is for Burglar- Sue Grafton
The Black Echo- Michael Connelly
Bleak House- Charles Dickens
The Burnt Orange Heresy-Charles Willeford
The Corpse in the Snowman-Nicholas Blake
The Cuckoo’s Calling- Robert Galbraith
The Daughter of Time-Josephine Tey
Deathtrap- Ira Levin
Double Indemnity- James Cain
The Drowner- John MacDonald
Gaudy Night- Dorothy Sayers
Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn
Gorky Park- Martin Cruz Smith
The Hawk in the Rain- Ted Hughes
The Hunter- Richard Stark
The Ice Harvest- Scott Phillips
In a Lonely Place- Dorothy B. Hughes
The Name of the Rose- Umberto Eco
The Nine Tailors-Dorothy Sayers
A Pocket Full of Rye- Agatha Christie
The Poison Tree- Ellis Fitzgerald
Postmortem- Patricia Cornwell
Macbeth- William Shakespeare
Malice Aforethought- Anthony Berkeley Cox
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd- Agatha Christie
Raven Black- Ann Cleves
Rebecca- Daphne DuMaurier
The Red House Mystery- A.A. Milne
The Ritual Bath- Faye Kellerman
Shake Hands Forever- Ruth Rendell
A Simple Plan- Scott Smith
The Silence of the Lambs- Thomas Harris
The Secret History- Donna Tartt
The Shining- Stephen King
The Sittaford Mystery- Agatha Christie
Smilla’s Sense of Snow- Peter Hoeg
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold- John le Carre
Started Early, Took My Dog- Kate Atkinson
Strangers on a Train- Patricia Highsmith
Tied Up in Tinsel- Ngaio Marsh
Too Many Cooks- Rex Stout
We Have Always Lived in the Castle- Shirley Jackson
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes- Lawrence Block
A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L’Engle
I loved how the author incorporated some of the classic mystery novels into his story and it definitely makes me want to go back and explore them! Thanks for indulging me in what might have been a gigantic waste of time, but if nothing else, it does give you a ton of classic mysteries to refer back to.
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