Sunday, November 4, 2018

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

For all you Baroque lovers out there (of which I am one) here is one by Georg PhillipTeleman:  his Suite for Flute and Orchestra in A Minor.  Jean-Pierre Rampal is the soloist and conductor; the orchestra is the Jerusalem Music Center Chamber Orchestra.




Magpie MurdersMagpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I rarely read modern mysteries. There is usually too much perfunctory sex, violence and language. I understand that for some people that makes the novel, but I prefer good writing.

However, I really enjoyed Foyle's War on TV and Horowitz was the screen writer so I was willing to give his novel a try. Do I like it as well as my long time favorites written in the first half of the twentieth century? Not really. Did Horowitz write a good mystery. Yes, I would say so. There were things I liked and things I did not like.

Before continuing know that I am going to be providing a few spoilers, not the murderer(s) or anything, but plot developments that you might not want to know before reading the book for yourself.

First a summary: Susan Ryeland is an editor for a publishing company and has settled down in her apartment for the weekend to read the latest murder mystery from one of their authors.

As the reader, I found this mystery interesting, even if the characters were a little flat. Everybody was unpleasant except for the detective, Atticus Pund and his assistant Jason Fraser. Even so, the story moved along and I was looking forward to finding out "whodunnit".

But this is not to be. The last chapter is missing. Ryeland is as disappointed as we are and tries to contact her publisher as well as the author to find out where the rest of the story is.

That Monday when she gets to work she finds out that the author, Alan Conway, is dead from an apparent suicide. Ryeland finds herself examining Conway's suicide letter and the circumstances and arrives at the conclusion that he did not necessarily kill himself, that there is good chance he was murdered.

So we leave the first mystery and spend the middle part of the book running around with the editor as she attempts to uncover this second mystery. In the end, both mysteries are solved.

What I liked? Both mysteries were pretty good. Overall I enjoyed reading it. Interestingly, the characters in the second mystery were more interesting and likeable than the ones in the first mystery. They seemed to have flesh and blood while the first ones seemed gray and unreal.

Was this on purpose? It's a clever bit of writing if it is.

What did I not like? I was enjoying the first mystery and just when we arrive at the conclusion, we are jolted out of that reality and into a "greater" reality, the one where we have the author who supposedly wrote the first story and now a second mystery. I really did not enjoy that and frankly, maybe it is an original idea, but it added nothing to either story, in my opinion.

Horowitz also includes sections with different styles of writing, showing us what is good writing and what is bad writing. While I admire his ability, this felt a little bit like showing off. He even has two scripts of the same story, showing how one man wrote it badly and another one wrote it well.

Other than the jarring experience of the fourth wall of a fictional story being suddenly removed, the stories were good.

But I'm going back to my Stout, Sayers, Tey and Vickers.



View all my reviews




12 comments:

Brian Joseph said...

This is a great review Sharon. Initially, the idea of a mystery within a mystery sounds like a good one. It sounds creative and original. However, I can see how it could be jarring and could mar a story.

Thanks for posting the Teleman piece. I like baroque a lot.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Hi Brian. If you like mysteries, I would still recommend it, it has enough merit to make it worth while.

Glad you liked the Teleman!

mudpuddle said...

i guess my last comment got eaten by the google monster... i heard Rampal at Stanford u. once: extraordinary technologically but i thought the high register was a little thin... i used to practice this piece a lot on the recorder but i never got a chance to perform it...
i tried reading the first Horowitz book(mainly because of the name)but didn't get on with it: too bloody and cruel... i've been reading a lot of golden agers: R. Austin Freeman, Fred White, Edgar Wallace, Neil Gordon... they're downloadable from Gutenberg in America, Australia and Canada (Faded Pages)...

Sharon Wilfong said...

That's strange about Horowitz. I really liked Foyle's War but we tried watching Midsummer Murders also by Horowitz and it was gross. We saw one episode and quit.

Those authors look good and I don't recognize the names so I will look them up, especially since they are free on Gutenberg.

Marcia Strykowski said...

Great music choice, as always, and I like your review and the idea of having two mysteries in one. Good that the second group of characters was an improvement over the first, the other way around would have been such a disappointment.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Thanks, Marcia. I'm wondering if I should read anymore of Horowitz. I guess I can give him another try.

Cleo @ Classical Carousel said...

Oh my! The first story jumping to a second mystery reminds me of Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. I still haven't been able to get through that book. I'll probably skip Horowitz's books but still watch his T.V. series. Foyle's War was great and I enjoyed only the first couple of seasons of Midsomer Murders. I believe he also wrote some scripts for Poirot ..... I'd love to find out which ones because, while I love Poirot, there were a few productions I didn't like. Anyway, I'm rambling .... keep up the eclectic reading!

Sharon Wilfong said...

I have read a short story by Calvino and it has made me want to read more. Now that you bring him up, I am even more interested in reading his work.

I loved, loved, loved Foyle's War and wished there were so many more episodes. I could not stomach Midsomer Murders. I only saw one and the incest made me ill.

I do love Poirot with David Suchet (who became a Christian, by the way and is president of the British Bible Society). The TV series is one of the rare instances where I felt the TV characters were more interesting than the books. Especially the ones made after 2000. They were a little darker but the stories and people had greater depth, in my opinion.

You're never rambling. I love your comments. I wish you'd comment more!

Cleo @ Classical Carousel said...

I wish I had time to comment more! But be careful what you wish for! I can write letters which are supposed to pass for comments, lol!

Just to let you know, my Blogger account is doing weird things and now I can't comment on my own blog and not on other Blogger blogs through Google; I have to use the name/URL feature. It's very annoying and blogger hasn't fixed it yet, so I think I'll be moving to a self-hosted blog. More on that later, but I just wanted to let you know that if I don't respond to your comments, I'm not ignoring you! :-) Take care!

Sharon Wilfong said...

No problem! Blogger can be very frustrating. And I love letters. I should probably write a post about an international post card exchange group I belong to.

Carol said...

Hi Sharon, every now & again I pick up a modern novel but invariably I'm disappointed & I really don't want to waste my time on just an average book when there are so many excellent ones still waiting for me. Horowitz wrote some Sherlock Holmes themed books that I thought might be ok but I've never got around to trying them out. Right now I'm wallowing in Anna Karenina & wonder why it's taken me so long to get to that - it's suberb & despite the Russian names, not too hard to follow.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Hi Carol. I've seen the Sherlock books but I have not been motivated to read them.

I love Anna Karenina. I haven't read it in some years but it was so good. Probably time I picked it up again.