Double your pleasure, double your fun, with two mysteries in one!
Anthony Horowitz has done it again. Following up his Magpie Murders, with the sequel Moonflower Murders. Moonflower Murders, is once again a book within a book. The “outer” book follows publisher Susan Ryeland as she is hired to solve a murder which occurred eight years ago at a hotel and my be tied to a hotel employee who has just gone missing. The ‘inner” book, was written by Susan’s former writer, the late Alan Conway, who was inspired by the murder eight years prior. The Conway novel follows Atticus Pünd, a Poirot like detective, in one of his early adventures. Many of those involved in the “real” hotel murder are satirized in the Conway novel.
The beauty of this format is that once again you get two mysteries to solve with two casts of small town characters. Both mysteries are clever, both casts of characters have lots of people who are hiding secret pasts, and both are small town cozies. More importantly, both have satisfying conclusions.
Despite it being rather long, the book flies by. Horowitz has a gift for brilliantly setting up scenes (maybe because he is also a screenwriter). The ties between the stories are clever and the subtle tricks in the book written by Conway are really well done.
If you haven’t read Magpie Murders, this story is complete without it. But Magpie Murders is so wonderful you need to read that one also! This book will be released in the US in November, I was very fortunate to get an Advanced Reader Copy