Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

I loved Magpie Murders (2016) by Anthony Horowitz.  It's an international bestselling mystery novel that for me not only lived up to the hype but exceeded it.  This novel is definitely going on my end of year favorite books list.  And actually Magpie Murders would make my favorites list every year since I began my blog back in 2015.  I had such a wonderful reading experience. Five stars.

But now I have a dilemma.  How much to reveal about the plot of Magpie Murders without spoiling the mystery?  And so I used the Publisher's Weekly starred review of this novel as my guide.  And here are my bullet points detailing what this excellent mystery novel is about without revealing too many spoilers:

1.  Magpie Murders is set in the UK and it's a very original "dual-layered mystery". The protagonist Susan Ryeland is an editor at Cloverleaf Books.  And Susan when the novel begins is looking back on her experience editing Magpie Murders book 9 in Alan Conway's very successful Atticus Pund mystery series.  Susan tells us that she is a fan of Alan Conway's series. But Alan himself is very difficult to deal with and that's an opinion shared by everyone who knows him.  

2.  In the short intro Susan also tells us that being given Magpie Murders to edit changed her life and not in a good way.  She doesn't elaborate why.  

3.  The next part of the book is the novel Magpie Murders itself by the fictional Alan Conway.  The real author Anthony Horowitz does a masterful job.  He gives us about 200 pages of Alan Conway's novel set in Saxby-on-Avon 1955.  Atticus Pund the private investigator in Magpie Murders is a smart, decent man who has experienced alot of tragedy in his life.  He is a Holocaust survivor who after the war turned to detective work and he is a great one. 

4.  Atticus arrives in Saxby-on-Avon to solve the death of Mary Blakiston, the housemaid, and her employer Sir Magnus Pye.  Both reside at Pye Hall and died about a day apart from each other.  Mary's death seems to be an accident.  She fell down the stairs.  Magnus' death is no accident.  It's murder.  And Atticus is trying to figure out if the two deaths are related.  And for Magnus Pye who treated people poorly the list of suspects is considerable.

5.  So there I was with my journal noting clues about who could have murdered Mary and Magnus.  And then 200 pages into Alan's novel it comes to an abrupt halt and we hear from Susan again:

"Annoying, isn’t it? I got to the end of the manuscript on Sunday afternoon and rang Charles Clover immediately. Charles is my boss, the CEO of Cloverleaf Books, publishers of the Atticus Pünd series. My call went straight to voicemail. ‘Charles?’ I said. ‘What happened to the last chapter? What exactly is the point of giving me a whodunnit to read when it doesn’t actually say who did it? Can you call me back?’ ... I wondered why the manuscript was incomplete and I was annoyed that Charles hadn’t called me back. Later that night I found out why. I’d treated myself to a taxi and the driver had the radio on. It was the fourth item on the evening news. Alan Conway was dead"

6.  Susan goes on a search to find the missing chapters of Magpie Murders so that Cloverleaf can publish Alan Conway's book.  But increasingly it's looking to Susan like Alan Conway's suicide was murder.  And Susan has now become an amateur sleuth.  And are the clues to Alan's death embedded in his novel?

Anthony Horowitz has said that Magpie Murders is his tribute to Agatha Christie and the golden age of mysteries.  And I can see that connection. If you are a fan of Agatha Christie, mystery novels or great writing and plotting in general,  Magpie Murders is a must read.