Review: Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz picks up straight after Magpie Murders and it was a pleasure to catch up with publishing editor turned hotelier Susan Ryeland. Susan is living in Greece with her boyfriend and running a hotel in Crete that is barely making a profit when a married couple from London ask to speak with her.

They too run a hotel and their daughter Cecily has gone missing. Years earlier, on the day of Cecily's wedding a murder took place with the guilty party eventually locked up in jail. However, Cecily has recently gone missing after reading Atticus Pund Takes The Case by the late Alan Conway and calling her parents convinced it has something to do with the murder. Nobody knows Atticus Pund Takes The Case better than Susan, given she edited the book years ago so she agrees to travel to London for a fee to see if she can find out what happened to Cecily.

Once again, Anthony Horowitz has executed clever plotting, but second time around I gave up trying to guess the whodunnit and enjoyed being led by the proverbial collar until Horowitz was ready for his final reveal. I was impressed by the complex plot devices, however I didn't enjoy being made to feel a little foolish at the end with a showy reveal by Conway/Susan/Horowitz and clues I had no hope of following; look how many lion references were in the text. Maybe the reader isn't expected to be able to identify any of these clues let alone solve the multiple mysteries but they were so detailed and obscure they felt contrived.

The confusing page numbering system from the first book in the series rears its ugly head again here, with the manuscript Atticus Pund Takes the Case by Alan Conway incorporated into the novel. The manuscript is inserted after Page 227, after which the page numbers begin all over again with Page 1. Then, when Atticus Pund Takes the Case has concluded, we return to Susan Ryeland's investigation which forms Moonflower Murders at Page 231. I believe this is entirely unnecessary and the change in font and inclusion of a cover page, title page, dedication, table of contents and character list clearly signposts the change.

Since finishing this book I enjoyed watching the TV adaptation of Magpie Murders when I'd previously found it impenetrable. When it came out in 2022, I gave it a one episode trial but couldn't work out why actors were playing multiple characters in different timelines. After reading the book and understanding Alan Conway bases characters in his manuscript on people he knows in real life it instantly made sense.

Moonflower Murders has also been adapted for the screen with the same actors returning to play the key characters and I have plans to check that out soon. There's a third book in the series entitled Marble Hall Murders - published in 2025 - but I think I'm going to leave it here for now. There are other authors writing in the style of vintage detective crime novels in tribute to authors like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle that I enjoy much more; I'm looking at you Benjamin Stevenson!

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: The Land And Its People by David Sedaris

The Land And Its People by David Sedaris came out in May 2026, and in my opinion the only way to enjoy his entertaining essays and reflections on life is to listen to the man himself on audiobook. This latest offering was recorded live between November 2024 - February 2026 with the majority of the essays recorded in January and February of this year.

I had the pleasure of seeing David Sedaris live in Melbourne in February 2025, and it was there that I heard his work entitled Goodyear (about his close friend Dawn and a tyre) and Good Grief (about the chemo cape). It's possible we were also treated to My Finances in Brief and the essay titled And Your Little Dog Too contained in this collection.

I later learned that Sedaris read from draft and unpublished essays during the Melbourne performance I attended so I guess it's a matter of course for these works to feature in a book at some point. I'll admit being a little disappointed to find so much overlap and decided I'm happy to wait for his next book instead of going to see him again in Melbourne in January 2027.

In The Land And Its People, I enjoyed the Care and Feeding essay where Sedaris recounts his experience as a carer for his husband Hugh following his hip replacement surgery and while I believe he also performed this in Melbourne it could have changed a little since then and I didn't mind hearing it again.

The author's obsession with Duolingo and the unique way he interacts with the language bot was new to me and very entertaining. When living in France with Hugh, David spent years learning French and studies other languages including German, Japanese and Spanish and 'has' to Duolingo every day. I share his love of word play but the way he interacts with AI makes me wonder whether he does it purely for his own enjoyment or with the additional knowledge that it also happens to make for a terrific story.

My favourite chapter was Enough is Enough with plenty of relatable and chuckle worthy moments and I also loved Punching Down, eliciting much mirth when I listened to it again with my husband.

The Land And Its People is the latest book by David Sedaris, and while I've read and reviewed seven others - see the list below - I still haven't read all of his work. Give me time though, I don't think I'll ever tire of his droll sense of humour and satirical observations delivered in his inimitable style of storytelling.

Other titles I've read and reviewed by David Sedaris (in the order I read them), include: 

Calypso

Naked

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Happy-Go-Lucky

Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons

The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons has been on my virtual TBR for an embarrassing 12 years. Published in 1992, I was unable to source it at my local library or via inter library loan so I purchased a copy in 2025 with a gift card but only picked it up when it was chosen for me in a recent book group buddy pick.

Main character Jeremy is a telepath and has the ability to read minds and it's this premise that motivated me to track down a copy. Jeremy's wife Gail is also a telepath and while they can erect mindshields, they share an entirely unique connection. Jeremy is a mathematics professor and there's a surprising amount of maths, science and quantum mechanics in this novel as the protagonist tries to figure out his telepathic ability and life itself.

However Gail is dying - not a spoiler, it's in the blurb - and when he is left alone, his life spirals in unimaginable ways. We're treated to a number of flashbacks to fill in their history together, but Jeremy calling Gail kiddo all the time was ridiculously annoying and didn't seem husband and wife appropriate at all. Here in Australia, kiddo is an endearing term for - you guessed it - a child!

Jeremy thinks about and discusses chaos theory and quantum mechanics throughout the book and I only managed the merest grasp on the theories being presented which detracted a little from my enjoyment. As did the ambiguous ending with the reader left to decide what happened based on whether they believed in the philosophical or scientific ending.

Elements of The Hollow Man reminded me of the writing style of Dean Koontz, and I think it's fair to say that if you enjoy his writing, you'll enjoy this science fiction offering from his compatriot Dan Simmons.

It was only when writing this review that I learned the author Dan Simmons passed away in February this year. He was a prolific writer - publishing more than 30 books - but The Hollow Man is a stand alone novel recommended for science fiction readers and if you have an interest in quantum mechanics, chaos theory or neuroscience you'll love this!

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: Slime by Susanne Wedlich

Slime - A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich has been translated from German by Ayça Türkoğlu and is a scientific exploration of all things slimy. Susanne Wedlich is a freelance science journalist and quickly defines slime for the reader as an extremely aqueous and viscously fluid hydrogel, which - under certain conditions - can also bear the properties of a solid.

Later on, she defines slime even further as follows:

"It's the default term for unknown but sluggish fluids or creepily soft solids. It's a thing in between and a feeling and a description of materials, but there is not one prototypical slime. Depending on origin and function, it hides behind a multitude of pseudonyms like gel, biofilm, mucilage, glycocalyx, but also in ecological communities like biological soil crusts, or in phenomena like marine snow." Page 49

Wedlich also explains that slime is a biological substance with physical properties and biological functions while also being a phenomenon - or an idea - which repels and disgusts.

I was hoping the book would consist of an even mix of science and cultural phenomenon, but it's safe to say it was almost all natural science. The author offers a few references to modern culture, with the slime in Alien and The Matrix movies instantly evocative.

"It's no surprise that their uses in nature are extremely varied, including as lubricants and adhesives, tailor-made for the species and organism. Slime is also essential, selectively permeable barrier inside the human body and elsewhere, allowing in nutrients and other desirable visitors, but stopping pathogens and pollutants in their tracks." Page 43

A large part of the book is spent offering examples of species using slimes as lubricants, adhesives, modes of transport and more, and I found myself continually putting the book down to investigate further. I could definitely do without knowing there are spiders in aeroplankton over Greenland - spiders, in the air!! - or that pearl fish live inside the anus of sea cucumbers but loved learning about marine snow. Another interesting rabbit hole involved hagfish, when the author tells us that the US Navy is trialling the use of military lab-grade hagfish slime to stop suspicious ships in their tracks without using force. Now I'd love to see that!

The relatively new discipline of 'mucomics' is research into the ability of slime to be used in the development of new technologies. Historically, slime has been used in all sorts of ways and in Germany and pre-industrial Sweden, the black slug was used as a lubricant on carts.

"When the dry axle began to squeak, a slug would be placed on the wheel hub and crushed as the carriage continued on its way." Page 55

Ewww! Elsewhere, I enjoyed the mention of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey which is a book I still think of every now and again, despite having read it way back in 2011.

I didn't know deserts and dry regions are covered in a mucilaginous surface which counters erosion and evaporation and that disturbing the soil is like ripping the protective skin layer off, with serious consequences. I learned that even the sea has a skin composed of a delicate layer of gel just a fraction of a millimetre thick.

If Wedlich has an agenda here, it's definitely the importance of the environment and the damage human beings are doing to it. She makes her case firstly by laying out the facts, like explaining that diatoms release at least 20 per cent of all the oxygen we breathe, then pointing out how vulnerable they are to changing temperatures.

The author points out that forest clearing, over-fishing, rising temperatures, acidification and pollution are wiping out species and decimating food webs all over the world. In addition to mass extinctions and the global biodiversity crisis, the author gives us a new reason to care about this, mucomics. If species are wiped out before we can study them, then not only do we lose the opportunity to potentially develop new medicines, we could also lose the opportunity to develop new technologies, based on their unique biological properties.

Much of the content focusses on marine science and I occasionally found the content dry, despite the frequent references to dripping and sticky slime. I was hoping for more about the cultural significance of slime but didn't find it here.

Slime - A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich will appeal to readers with an interest in popular science and the environment.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!