Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz *****

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz opens with Susan Ryland, the editor at Cloverleaf Books, presenting best-selling author Alan Conway’s ninth novel in the Atticus Pünd series: Magpie Murders. (Got that? It gets better). Halfway through the book, the novel-within-a-novel ends missing the finals chapters. Now Susan Ryland goes searching for those missing chapters and Alan Conway is murdered. This murder parallels the murder we just read. We now have two murder mysteries. Alan Conway’s unfinished mystery with Atticus Pünd as the detective, and Anthony Horowitz’s mystery with Susan Ryland as the detective. Ryland’s quest includes parallels with Atticus Pünd’s quest and editorial reflections on the art and tradition of murder mysteries. In the end, it all comes together.

The fictional Magpie Murders with detective Atticus Pünd ostensibly authored by Alan Conway takes place southwest of London near Bath (a city loved by Jane Austen). Magpie Murders with the detective (and fiction editor) Susan Ryland takes place northeast of London in East Anglia, a flat, rural area of England not distinguished by much. In one of the many parallels between the two tales, both detectives are based in London.

Anthony Horowitz is a writer with two British TV murder mystery series: Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. Midsomer Murders is mentioned six times and Foyle’s War once. Many other mystery writers are mentioned. Agatha Christie gets a dozen mentions. One interest theme is the antipathy between authors and their detectives with many authors attempting to kill off their detectives. The book explicitly mentions Reichenbach Falls where Sherlock Holmes fell to his death, only to be resurrected later.

Susan Ryland, reflecting on the life of Alan Conway discusses puzzles hidden in mysteries. In each of the Atticus Pünd books, Alan Conway names his characters after birds, London tube stations, writers, or fountain pens. The characters in the Atticus Pünd story and those in the Susan Ryland one, have parallel names. Inspector Locke in East Anglia and Inspector Chubb in Bath. The ultimate joke is that Atticus Pünd is an anagram for the stupid ----. The final word is left as a puzzle for the reader.

In the exploration of murder mysteries, coincidences were impugned over and over. “I don’t like coincidences in novels, and particularly not in murder mysteries, which work because of logic and calculation. The detective really should be able to reach his conclusion without having providence on his side.” While our detectives are logical, the mysteries are not. A long string of improbable coincidences generates a matching set of red herrings. Of course, the detectives are not fooled.

With all the discussion of the conventions of murder mysteries, the end of Magpie Mysteries still manages to surprise.

On a personal note, the settings of Bath, London, East Anglia, and Crete are all familiar to me and that might have added to my enjoyment.

An enjoyable novel of nested mysteries and observations of the whodunit genre. Complex and enjoyable. A masterpiece.

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