Bingo: And. Horowitz embeds a mystery book in his mystery book. One mystery and another mystery.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This book, third in the Susan Ryeland series, references the solution to the first book, Magpie Murders. Readers are advised to read that book first if they don’t want it spoiled.
Marble Hall Murders takes up where Moonflower Murders ended. Editor Susan Ryeland has moved back to England from Crete and is freelancing for a new publisher. The publisher has given Susan a manuscript that lays out the last case of fictional detective Atticus Pünd. The author who took over the series, Eliot Crace, is the grandchild of late children’s writer Miriam Crace. She was a wild success and became a wealthy woman who bought the mansion called Marble Hall. As the book unfolds, we also find out she was a cruel monster to her family, although the public image she had was the opposite.
The gimmick, if you will, of the Susan Ryeland series is there is always a mystery book embedded in the greater mystery. Here, Susan reads the partial manuscript Eliot has written, so we are thrown into the mystery of a murder that takes place in the wealthy Chalfont family. It’s a little tricky keeping track of all the characters in both mysteries, especially since the fictional Chalfonts are based on the Crace family members, but I eventually got a handle on things.
The mirrored stories seem to imply that Miriam Crace’s death twenty years before was actually a murder, so that is the mystery that wraps around the fictional Chalfont story. Susan finds that Eliot has been scarred by his childhood thanks to his grandmother and while is a good writer, is also a hopeless substance abuser. He confesses to Susan that he and his siblings hated their grandmother and even daydreamed up a plot to poison her.
There is another plot that calls back to Magpie Murders which is exceedingly well done, but I don’t want to give anything away. This is another fabulous book from Anthony Horowitz who has never let me down. He is by far my favorite current mystery writer and in fact I have another of his books lined up after this one.
The revelations in both the Chalfont mystery and the Crace mystery are clever and satisfying. The book also wrapped up Susan’s story in excellent fashion. I hope this is the last book in the series as it all was so satisfying and another book seems superfluous.
