Few modern authors have such a firm and delightful grasp on the conventions and stylings of classic detective fiction that Anthony Horowitz has. This has proven especially true in his television writing: Poirot and Midsomer Murders displayed a deft hand at adaptation, but it was Foyle’s War that really proved Horowitz’ mettle. If you haven’t watched that series, what are you waiting for? 

It may come as no surprise that, out of all the Anthony Horowitz novels I’ve read and enjoyed, the favorite of this classic crime fan has been Magpie Murders (2016). At 560 pages it is twice as long as your typical GAD book, but it solved that dilemma by giving us two mysteries for the price of one. There’s the modern-day case presided over by hapless publisher Susan Ryeland, who must solve the murder of her most popular author, Alan Conway, and find the missing last chapters of his final mystery featuring that brilliant German sleuth, Atticus Pünd. And then there is the Pünd novel itself, a charming pastiche of a Christie village mystery. 

Granted, I didn’t need that missing chapter to identify both murderers, past and present, and to spot the giveaway clue. Normally, I don’t much enjoy solving the case ahead of time, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying all the meta-fictional aspects of the book and the clever way Horowitz incorporated the stylings of past and present where the story suited them. So it was with great excitement that I discovered the author intended to write two sequels to Magpie. The first of these, Moonflower Murders, came out in 2020, and I bought it right away. 

But I didn’t read it right away. I started it, and then I put it away. And then I took it out and restarted it . . . and then I put it away again. Let’s blame the pandemic for that. Or Donald Trump. You choose. 

A recent TV ad for the upcoming adaptation of Moonflower reminded me that I have this book stewing on my shelf, and so I decided to read it at last ahead of watching the show. Once again, we get two mysteries in one, and Susan Ryeland is our guide. After the events of Magpie Murders, Susan has quit publishing and accompanied Andreas, her hunky Greek fiancé, to Crete, where she is assisting him in the running of his hotel. The surroundings are paradisical, but the work is grueling, and it never lets up. Susan loves her man, but she misses London, and she misses the intellectual spark of working around books and the tempestuous people who write them. 

And then a couple appear at the hotel looking for Susan. Lawrence and Pauline Treherne own and run a luxury inn called Branlow Hall in Suffolk. Eight years earlier, the wedding of their younger daughter Cecily to handsome Aidan MacNeil was interrupted by the brutal murder of a guest, an Australian advertising man named Frank Parris. The victim appeared to have been robbed, and the police arrested the hotel handyman, a Romanian ex-con named Stefan Codrescu, who made the grand gesture of confessing to the crime. Case closed.

Or is it? Of course not – The book is six hundred pages long!! Eight years later, another person disappears from the hotel, and their last known message concerned none other than Magpie Murders victim Alan Conway – and, specifically, his third novel, Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Learning that Susan used to publish Conway’s books and was involved in the investigation after his murder, the Trehernes offer her a lot of money to return to England, stay at their hotel, and look into the past murder in hopes of solving the present disappearance.

Even though she doesn’t see herself as a true sleuth – and she almost died playing detective in the last book! – Susan is anxious to step foot in England once more, and so she risks her relationship with Andreas and returns to investigate. She meets all the people who were on the scene for Frank’s murder, and she crosses paths once again with her arch nemesis from the first book, Detective Superintendent Locke, now promoted to Chief Inspector, who was in charge of the Alan Conway case and is now looking into the disappearance. 

And, of course, halfway through Moonflower Murders, Susan reads Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, and we’re right there reading over her shoulder. At first, the connections between the fictional past and the real one may be too subtle for Susan to find. But after further questioning and one brush with death, she manages to solve her second case. Bring on the third! (Marble Hall Murders is listed on Amazon, but there’s no release date yet.)

I thoroughly enjoyed Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, although I didn’t find the detective himself as compelling a character. (In all fairness,  the Pünd of Magpie Murders is going through an existential crisis, while here he is merely a successful sleuth, and I found him a bland one at that.) However, I didn’t feel quite as sanguine about the present-day mystery. Despite a nice assortment of suspects, the killer seemed fairly obvious to me. There’s also the issue – which, in all fairness, Susan Ryeland points out herself – regarding the way modern technology has affected the modern mystery.

“Alan Conway used to say that the Internet was the worst thing that ever happened to detective fiction – which was one of the reasons why he set his own stories back in the fifties. He had a point. It’s hard to make your detective look clever when all the information in the world is instantly available to everyone in the world at a moment’s notice. In my case, I wasn’t trying to look clever. I was simply searching for the truth. But I’m sure Atticus Pünd wouldn’t have approved of my methods.”It certainly is more fun watching Pünd decipher clues than to hear Susan expose suspects’ secrets through a Google search. And, for a long while, it makes the whole point of the Pünd novel serving as a clue to the answers in the present seem more tenuous than they did in Magpie Murders. Horowitz manages to redeem himself somewhat in the final chapter, where hitherto unseen clues are revealed. These vary in quality, but one of them is really clever.