A few years back I had the absolute delight to read Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders. I was then thrilled to learn that in 2020 he would be publishing a sequel! We once again meet (former) editor Susan Ryland. Having moved on to what she hopes is a more idyllic life in Crete, she suddenly finds herself swept back into the world of Atticus Pünd and author Alan Conway. Now she has to go back to the UK and try to find out what exactly happened in The Moonflower Murders.
Once again deftly using a book-within-a-book premise, Horowitz tells us a story that fits right in with the classics of the old school English murder mystery genre. This time he sets his sights on a much more modest idea, solving an old murder in a quaint, but modern, inn in the English countryside.
Approached by a wealthy couple whose daughter has gone missing, Susan is asked to intervene in the death of one Frank Parris at the Moonflower Hotel. The Trehernes family was aghast when eight years ago one of their workers killed a guest for perhaps no reason. Swiftly convicted, the Romanian worker was carted off to prison despite flimsy evidence. However, now their daughter has gone missing and one of her last acts was to phone her parents and say that the man was innocent, and she had figured it out by reading one of the late Alan Conway's books.
Thrown into a mystery eight years old, and with no authority whatsoever, Susan must pick through a prickly family who alternate between distrusting her and bereaved, the family of the former murder victim who are outright hostile, and a police inspector who doesn't want her sticking her nose into the investigation at all.
It's a cast of characters that wouldn't appear out of place in an Agatha Christie novel. A wealthy family with a prickly relationship, a grieving husband of few means, a sinister cast of not so trustworthy extras, and the English countryside as a background. With many winks to old English detective stories, it sets out to take murder into the 21st century while trying to piece together clues from a book within a book that purport to solve the crime.
The secondary story Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, is from the titular Atticus Pünd series from her deceased former author, Alan Conway. Written in the vein of a Christie era thriller set in the 1950s, it tells a similar story with a cast of characters not so different - in subtle strokes - to the potential murderers in real life. It was a nice distraction from the main story with a complete series of twists all its own, but one that was cleverly foreshadowed in a way that kept me looking for clues to the killer in the principle story. Two mysteries in one has never worked out so well!
Horowitz manages to pile on twists while keeping the book entertaining and suitably throwing off your attention. There's enough surprises to keep you guessing to the very end, and overall he manages to wrap up the story quite nicely. Definitely another excellent mystery for the 21st century.
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