Book Review: Magpie Murders

If you were to scan my Goodreads list of books read you would likely see a disproportionate number of mysteries and thrillers compared to other genres. This started a couple of years ago after binges on British TV shows such as Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Father Brown that I turned my attention towards reading the books upon which these great detectives were based. Along the way I also discovered a number of new detectives and stories to read.

I also frequent a lot of used book stores because (a) I read a large number of books; (b) I don't necessarily want to keep the books after I have read them and trade them for more books and (c) because I am cheap. Often my trips to the bookstore uncover amazing finds (as I have previously documented on Instagram). This was especially true for Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.

I was familiar with Mr. Horowitz's writing for television particularly as creator of such shows as Foyle's War, New Blood, and Collision. He's also contributed scripts to Agatha Christie's Poirot and Midsomer Murders. He's also written Sherlock Holmes stories and James Bond novels (each with blessing of the estates of Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming) as well as an adventure series for young adults.

But it's clear that Mr. Horowitz knows what makes a good mystery and how to in some ways turn the conventions on their head. This is certainly true in Magpie Murders which features a novel within a novel thus setting up two mysteries for the reader to solve.

From the synopsis:

Editor Susan Ryeland has worked with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, so she has no reason to think his latest novel will be much different from his others. Readers love his detective, Atticus Pünd, a celebrated solver of crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s.

But Conway’s latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.

All throughout the book are sly references to Agatha Christie novels. It is no accident that Atticus Pund reminds readers a lot of Christie's Hercule Poirot. The similarities between the two characters is striking. There are also other reminders scattered about that will remind readers of other famous detectives as well.

It's difficult to take an established literary genre as the British cozy mystery and do something completely different with it but Mr. Horowitz manages to do just that. It's clear that he understands how the genre works and is willing to turn convention on its head. I look forward to seeing what he has coming next.