Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz: A Review by Shari Randall

Book-editor-with-a-flair-for-solving-mysteries Susan Ryeland is back in a fresh and witty new installment of Anthony Horowitz’s Atticus Pund book-within-a-book mystery series.

 

Returning to London from sunny Greece, Susan is tasked with editing a work of fiction that leads her into danger in real life. Pund’s Last Case is a continuation of the successful Atticus Pund series, which if you’ve read the other books in this series, led Susan into not only danger, but personal and professional disaster.

 

Her financial situation and innate curiosity, however, overcome her reluctance. Pund’s Last Case is an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery set in the south of France in 1955. In it, Pund’s friend, Lady Margaret Chalfont, begs Pund to visit her at her magnificent villa, Chateau Belmar. But before Pund can arrive, she dies after drinking her afternoon tea. Pund’s curiosity is piqued. Why was she so eager to consult with him? When it is revealed that Lady Chalfont had been poisoned, Pund wonders why the murderer killed a woman who had only weeks to live.

 

Susan’s curiosity is piqued also. Why was young, unstable Eliot Crace, author of an unsuccessful series of his own, hired to write Pund’s Last Case? When Susan visits Eliot’s family home, Marble Hall, she’s shocked by the parallels between the death of fictional Lady Margaret Chalfont and Eliot’s grandmother, Miriam Crace, author of the world’s best-selling children’s books. As Eliot’s behavior becomes more and more erratic, Susan tries to help the young author, but another murder ensues and she becomes the number one suspect.

 

Readers will delight in Horowitz’s deftly plotted dual narratives. The anagrams, puzzles, and dishy commentary on the current publishing scene pull you in like a cozy chat. 

Yes, Marble Hall has spoilers from the first two books in the series (Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), but book three stands on its own and the book ends with the door open for more adventures for … oops not going to spoil that for you!

 

If you’re looking for an entertaining traditional mystery by an author at the top of his game, look no further than Marble Hall Murders.

Shari Randall loves a good traditional mystery. She won an Agatha Award for her first book, Curses, Boiled Again!, and as Meri Allen, she pens the Ice Cream Shop Mystery series.

 

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz: A Review

By Shari Randall

Writing a review for a mystery is a tricky business. How to keep the review spoiler free while at the same time giving readers a taste of the ingredients that make a book a tempting dish?

This is especially true of Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders. Some reviewers called Magpie Murders “a puzzle within a puzzle.” It was certainly that, but more importantly for me and other fans of classic British mystery, it was a book that better channeled Agatha Christie than any other I’ve read in years.

I read once that when Horowitz was a young man, he traveled around the world, reading Agatha Christie novels as he went. He certainly absorbed all the elements that make Christie’s Poirot books catnip to the mystery reader: the omniscient-but-irritating investigator, the cozy English village, the simmering resentments and crimes barely covered by a lace tablecloth of respectability and good manners. More than that, he’s mastered Christie’s deft and delicate planting of clues in broad daylight.

Horowitz is well known for his work on television’s Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. He was chosen by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to write The House of Silk and Moriarty, and completed one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels to acclaim. Plus, he’s known to millions of young adults as the author of the exciting Alex Rider spy novels. Talk about writing chops.

I couldn’t wait to dive in.

The story opens with an editor, Susan Ryeland, reading the latest book in her best selling author Alan Conway’s Atticus Pünd mystery series. The book-within-the-book is called Magpie Murders. One begins to feel the proximity of a rabbit hole. One doesn’t mind. One jumps in with both feet.

The novel within the novel is perfection. Atticus Pünd (yes, with an umlaut) is just as brilliant, irritating, and pompous as Poirot. He may be German instead of Belgian, but he’s the guy. His assistant, James Fraser, was actually an improvement upon the dim but good hearted Hastings — younger, more sympathetic, more perceptive.

All the usual suspects are there in the village of Saxby-on-Avon: the doubting vicar, the vicar’s bossy wife, the stately home, the aristocratic boor, the aristocratic boor’s unfaithful wife, the snooping maid. There’s even a suit of armor. I positively wallowed in the Christie-ness of it all.

That’s why it jarred a bit every few chapters to be tossed back into the current day, “real world” with Susan Ryeland. She discovers that the last few chapters of Magpie Murders have gone missing. Susan’s search to find them leads her into the twisted world of the author and another constellation of suspects.

Verdict? I give Magpie Murders four and a half teapots out of five. It would have been five but the framing story was bogged down by just one too many red herrings, especially one that just didn’t ring true.

But honestly, reader, you won’t care. If you are looking for a perfectly entertaining and pitch perfect channeling of the great Agatha’s Poirot, look no further. Get the book, make yourself a lovely cup of darjeeling, and dive into Magpie Murders.

Have you read the Magpie Murders or any other great mysteries lately? Please share in the comments below.