Magpie Murders
07/09/2017
I'd been looking forward to Anthony Horowitz's "Magpie Murders" since I first read about it in an interview in 2014. Horowitz is a prolific author and television screenwriter ("Agatha Christie's Poirot," "Midsomer Murders," and the classic "Foyle's War") and I've long been a fan. He's written two authorized Sherlock Holmes books ("House of Silk," "Moriarty"), a James Bond Novel ("Trigger Mortis") and a series of novels for young adults.
"Magpie Murders" is a book within a book, and both are excellent murder mysteries. The story kicks off in present day with Susan Ryeland, a book editor at London's Cloverleaf Books, getting a new manuscript from prized mystery novelist Alan Conway. It's the ninth book in their best-selling detective Atticus Pünd series, set in 1955 rural England. The book then switches to this straightforward murder story, filled with suspects straight out of a classic Golden Age mystery. Horowitz knows how to write a compelling pastiche! But just as the brilliant Pünd is on the brink of announcing the solution to the murder, the manuscript comes to an abrupt end. And now there's a whole different level of mystery for Ryeland to solve in order to find the missing pages that provide the answer. The present day mystery is darker and parallels the Pünd story in curious ways, with characters, places and complications in the 1955 story rippling into the present. I found Ryeland's present-day mystery to be more fast-paced and complex than the "inner" story, but both stories work well and they are intertwined like a crossword puzzle.
One of the stories hinges on, what might be called, a cupid stunt, which may leave some readers cold. Nonetheless, it fits well with the characters Horowitz has created. In a postscript interview, Horowitz spells out exactly what he thinks of his fictional author Alan Conway; as much as he loves the mystery genre, he does not always love the characters he creates.
"Magpie Murders" is a delightful novel for fans of Golden Age mysteries and puzzle stories. I don't know if Horowitz really did provide all the clues necessary to solve the murder in the first three pages but he created a deuce of a whodunit.
Did you solve the mystery? If so, let me know in the comments below.
- Amazon: Magpie Murders, House of Silk, Moriarty, Trigger Mortis, Foyle's War
- Wikipedia: Anthony Horowitz
- Reviews: NPR, NY Times, Time, USA Today, Washington Post