Magpie Murders: A Novel
"Magpie Murders is a double puzzle for puzzle fans, who don’t often get the classicism they want from contemporary thrillers." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times
New York Times bestseller | Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Novel | NPR best book of the Year | Washington Post best book of the Year | Esquire best book of the Year
From the New York Times bestselling author of Moriarty, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery.
When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.
Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.
Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.
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Community Reviews
It's one thing reading about detectives, quite another trying to be one.
When editor Susan Ryeland gets handed the latest manuscript by famous author Alan Conway, set in the world of a Poirot like sleuth, she thinks nothing of it and sets to do her job. However, due to real life events, she soon finds herself dragged into something much bigger than the world of publishing.
This book has a very interesting format. It starts from our protagonist's point of view and then, when she picks up the manuscript, it presents us with the detective novel she's tasked with editing only to shove us back into the primary plot once that's done. I found it very effective, just like Susan I was drawn into the detective novel and was quite upset when the last chapter was revealed to be missing!
The manuscript follows the adventures of Atticus Pünd, the detective created by Alan Conway, who is very much a homage to Poirot and other detectives from the golden age of detective fiction. I very much enjoyed this tale. I love detective stories and the author here got the tone and rhythm down just right. It was engaging, had all the clues laid out and I found the conclusion satisfactory. I actually managed to solve one of the murders before it was revealed but I never saw the big reveal coming up.
Now, the rest of the book was quite good. I really liked the way the author sprinkled different formats all throught the book, it gave it an interesting vibe. The mystery was good, thought I did manage to figure out the culprit fairly early on. I actually wasn't that interested in finding out who killed Alan. In fact, I wanted it to be an accident or an actual suicide. I just think it would have been interesting to have Susan obsess over nothing, but I guess that's a whole different book. I stuck until the end because I wanted to find the last chapter of Atticus Pünd's book.
Having said all that, this book gets 4 stars because I didn't care much for Susan as a protagonist. Her obsession really didn't come across that well and, while I understand it's emulating and referencing the classic detective novels, I did not care for people immediately telling this random woman with no authority everything she wanted to know. I was facepalming so hard when she turned her back to the murderer. GIRL you read a lot of murder mysteries, come on!!I also found the plot with Andreas unimportant, and more of a means to an end than an actual source of conflict.
Overall enjoyable read and I will be reading the next one in this series.
If one quote could sum up my feelings about this book, it would be the one above. I understand the premise of the book within the book, parallels slowly being revealed through the unraveling of two mysteries. I however, do not understand the hype this book received.
Magpie Murders could have existed solely as the mystery Atticus Pünd is on a mission to solve, without the Alan Conway nonsense mixed in.
This almost made it to my DNF pile....
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