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!
Carpe Librum!
