Magpie Murders: A Novel

I was attracted to reading Magpie Murders because I was enthralled with the TV series, in which two stories are interwoven, and I wanted to read the book before I watched the end of the series. In the book, there are likewise two stories, but they are told sequentially rather than intercut.First one reads the whodunit Magpie Murders with detective Atticus Pund by the fictitious Alan Conway. Then one reads the first-person story of his book editor, Susan Ryeland, trying to find the missing last chapter. The reader tries to solve the mysteries of the first novel, but then in sharing Susan’s search for the missing manuscript also ultimately has to solve another murder(s). The plots are intricate, though the book is actually easier to follow than the TV show. (That said, the interplays and cuts between the two stories in the TV programs make for interesting viewing and seem appropriate to the medium.)Besides solving the crimes, the main characters in both stories have internal as well as external conflicts, making important decisions about their futures and allegiances, adding an additional level of complexity. Throughout, there is a wide cast of interesting possible suspects with motives -- many paralleling their avatars in the other story. Many red herrings and a surprise ending add to the suspense.Past events (some of which I hadn’t guessed) are uncovered, and the culprit(s) are eventually revealed. Additionally, the settings (London, a quaint village, a monstrous mansion) are wonderful, as I might expect from Anthony Horowitz, who developed Midsommer Murders and Foyle’s War. Add a peek at writing and publishing and some wordplay (codes, anagrams), and this multilevel mystery is a really involving and fun read.

This is a well-written novel, engaging in many ways, but also strange. Horowitz plays with conventions in a way that’s sometimes clever, but sometimes comes off as artifice. It’s unfair to generalize about the book as a whole, though, because it is two distinct, very different novels packed into one edifice-size book. I liked Novel One better than Novel Two.Novel One is a more or less traditional British mystery, well executed with marvelous depth of detail and interesting characters, supposedly by a writer named Alan Conway. It is being read in manuscript form by a nameless person. As a standalone, and with a conclusion, it would be a fine novel in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes … even including the pleasant but diffident Watson-like figure of James. Atticus Pünd is an estimable protagonist, a perfect analog of Holmes, deductive reasoning spinning but never exposed. However, the story is told by an omniscient narrator (who isn’t entirely omniscient, since he’s not privy to Pünd’s deductive logic.) Most of the time this isn’t a show-stopper, but it is jarring when the narrator goes into a character’s head right after refusing to go into Pünd’s thoughts. The story toddles along, the omniscient narrator giving it a very 19th Century feel. But wait, you say, Conan Doyle was one of the first noteworthy authors to use third person distant so he could let Watson tell the story without having to expose Holmes’ ratiocination until the very end. An omniscient narrator would know Pünd’s thinking, so the choice of that form comes off as artifice. The bigger problem is there is a crowd of named characters from the little town of Saxby-on-Avon. We love them all, and Horowitz is at his best when he’s describing them. Most are potential suspects by the end of the 90% of Novel One we get before a break …… to Novel Two, which starts with an attempt to solve the too-many-characters-to-remember problem in Novel One. The solution is to have the nameless editor, who we might or might not remember from chapter one, summarize many of the people in Novel One, reminding the relieved reader who all these folks are. But the summary comes off as artifice. (“Ohmigod, editor says there are too many characters. Well, I’ll fix that.”) After the summary, the editor finally lets us know she’s Susan Ryeland, and Book Two is off to the races … well, the trots … and Ryeland narrates the second story in first person. The transition from omniscient narrator to first person helps make a clear break from Novel One, but Ryeland is a less interesting narrator than Conway’s omniscient narrator, and first person somewhat circumscribes her ability to give the reader the opulent descriptions that made me turn the pages in Novel One. It turns out that there are many parallels between Conway, the author, and his protagonist, Atticus Pünd. That is well handled and interesting, but Ryeland’s search for missing material layers red herring upon red herring. Faced with many characters and many clues, I began to zone out. Still, the book is well-written. For readers who want complex plots and good writing, this book will be satisfying.

This book was equivalent to reading a history book, a historical fiction, and a modern-day mystery. My niece recommended I read Magpie Murders, and she usually has good recommendations, so when I first started reading the book I thought, “what did she get me into,” but after the initial couple of chapters and the more I read, the more I liked this book. The book was a mystery, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in another mystery.The characters were pretty well developed, and the story inside the story was done well and kept me interested and entertained. Only when I got to the latter part of the book did it start to wane and I became irritated that it was taking so long to unravel each of the mysteries. I noticed I began to skim through the pages (much like the editor in the book) to get to the ending and the whodunit conclusion. The book inside the book read like an Agatha Christie/Columbo type novel.Overall, a reasonably solid read.

Great book! Super fast shipper! Thank you

Story inside a story and to write it such a brilliant way is just amazing. A treat of a murder mystery.

Unfortunately, I must agree with the negative reviews here.As much as I've liked the 'book within the book' idea, the whole novel ends up being just far too long. It's a horrible thing to say to an author, but cutting off 25% of each part would have done a lot of good (maybe Susan should have edited it, haha!).Also, are we talking 'references' (to MSM, Poirot, Christie, etc) or plain clichées, because honestly...So many pages are wasted on so many things that are totally irrelevant to the story and weigh an already heavy plot even more down (one thing is a red herring, another thing is random ideas thrown in here and there).The way Pund 'solves the murder, is just neither realistic nor believable.Andreas is annoying.Characters are all so inconsistent, tons of words to describe each one of them, and still, no depth.Several inconsistencies here and there, hard to follow up anyway due to the length of this thing.

This is a tale set in 1955; the age of great crime fiction. This a story where Atticus Pund is hired to find out was a housekeeper murdered or did she fall down the stairs? He is an amateur sleuth who is well renowned and speak to all the cast to find out what happened.Then we have Susan who is an agent for Cloverleaf publishers. She looks after the writer Alan Conway who wrote Magpie Murders. Naturally she visits and speak to Alan who has written 8 Atticus Pund Books and is writing the nineth novel.So there are two tale side by side the unfolding of Magpie Murders and the lives of the people who work for and own Cloverleaf publishing.I will not talk about there tale any more so I do not ruin the plot.This is engaging and has you wanting to know what happens in each tale. The writing style is easy to read and has you on the edge of your seat in the final third. I read this in one heavy session as I wanted to know the conclusions.This is the first novel I have read of Anthony Horowitz and I will read more.

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