Anthony Horowitz: Marble Hall Murders
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.