Atticus Pund

Anthony Horowitz: Marble Hall Murders

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Susan Ryeland #3

If traditional, golden age style mystery is your jam, these books are absolute perfection.  Though it’s a series, and the main character, Susan Ryland, has her life change drastically between the volumes, you could definitely read each one as a standalone and not be lost.  Of course, if you like golden age style traditional mysteries, you’re going to read them in the order the author intended regardless, right?

As Anthony Horowitz has proven himself to me to be some kind of genius, I always find that it’s a good idea when opening one of his books to just relax and trust that he will reliably serve up a great story.  In this instalment former editor Ryeland has returned from her idyll in Crete after abandoning both the hotel business and her boyfriend.  She decides to take on freelance editing work (the reason why it’s freelance is explained in the earlier books), and the first assignment that comes her way is the continuation of the Atticus Pund series.  Pund, a detective working in the 1950s, was the creation of her former client, the late Alan Conway, who grew to hate his detective and decided to give him a fatal illness. The title of the new book, then, is Pund’s Last Case. read more

Anthony Horowitz: Moonflower Murders

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This book will be published on November 10, 2020.

This is every bit as delicious a reading experience as Magpie Murders (2018).  I really wasn’t sure how Horowitz was going to manage a second book, as several of the main characters in the first one are dead or heading that way at the end of the novel.  But Anthony Horowitz is one of the smartest writers working right now, and this sequel to his (in my opinion) classic Magpie Murders is every bit as good as the first one.

The main character is editor Susan Ryeland, who has given up her successful career to head to Crete and help her partner run a small hotel there.  It’s not going well.  The hotel is having trouble and it’s a mountain of work, so when Pauline and Lawrence Treherne appear asking for Susan’s help in locating their missing daughter back in England, she readily agrees, especially when they sweeten the pot by offering her £10,000.  She’s tired of Crete, she needs the money, and she takes the offer. read more