Magpie Murders

A Novel

By: Anthony Horowitz

Narrated by: Samantha Bond, Allan Corduner

Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, 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 best-selling 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 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 listener becomes the detective.

©2017 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd. (P)2017 Orion UK

Magpie Murders is terrific!

I really enjoyed this mystery within a mystery. The inner mystery is a Christie-type village murder of an obnoxious aristocrat whom everyone disliked. The framing mystery is the murder (or suicide) of the best-selling, equally disliked author. Both stories are compelling. Both have plausible resolutions.

The Best - Beyond Description it is so good

I won't give anything away because it is so clever and different with twist after twist. If you enjoy an Agatha Christie / Poirot type story, this is even better. I loved it and dreaded getting to the end of the story. I haven't felt that way about a book in a long time.

Did I guess the outcome? No way, but the solution made sense and I was very satisfied with the outcome.

If you love a good whodunit, police procedural, you have to get this audiobook. Beautifully narrated.

Too long?

I say too long only because it is hard to remember details. Too many off shoot back and forth. By the end, it comes together but by then.....oh well....

thought I was going to love it but then.....

This story should have been better because it had all the "fixins" to make it great- great characters, great setting, English countryside, reluctant female detective- the meta fictional device of a story within a story, wonderfully talented narrators....but then the author decided to put in one more story, so that it became a story, within a story, within a story. That is where Anthony Horowitz lost me and I got bored. Sometimes by trying to be too clever and do something unique a writer ends up being boring and predictable. Too bad because I really wanted to like love this!

Interesting ideas but...

It started well and I thought it was promising. The first part of the book that was the whodunnit was interesting. The action keeps the listener captivated.

Once Susan jumped in, I started to get impatient to go back to the whodunnit itself. Many long descriptions, that I felt could have been removed from the story and we would not miss it! It would have been a couple hours shorter if her love life wouldn’t have been added to the story.

In an attempt to be different, intricate and interesting by mixing an amateur detective within the whodunnit, it became long and boring.

Too much is like not enough.

I Loved This

Any additional comments?

The story gets a four because - well, the denoument was sort of inevitable. But, Who Cares? This was thoroughly enjoyable in every other respect. Smart. Funny. Engaging, and very well done. Well worth the credit.

Multiple Stories in one

A great who done it with a surprise ending. Lots of twists and turns that keep you guessing. if you like Agatha Christi you definitely love this book.

Very Engaging

The plot device of having two murder mysteries going at once, one "fictional" and one "real" that both relate to one another could easily have become rather cliche and forced, but the author does such a great job with both sides of the story that it is instead totally engaging and keeps you interested and attentive the whole time. The story is very well written and cleverly presented.

I really enjoyed both sides of this book, although perhaps my love of classic mystery stories shows in that my favorite side may have been the "fictional" story. I have deeply enjoyed both of Mr. Horowitz' entries into the Sherlock Holmes world and having him essentially in spirit venture into an homage to Agatha Christie was delightful. He has a skill for imitating the best parts of style and tone while still making everything uniquely his own. It's a little amusing, although not surprising given the necessary circumstances for the story set up, that he gives this same skill to his unpleasant author character. It becomes doubly amusing then when his author character in turn vests aspects of himself into a unpleasant character in his own book. Life imitates art imitates life is a theme in the book and I feel there's a little tongue in cheek going on there, although I could be wrong.

It is clear that Mr. Horowitz has a very good understanding of what people enjoy about mystery stories and why. It makes for excellent reading, although, to be honest, my only criticism of the story somewhat stems from this same point. While it is interesting to have a "who-done-it" that ponders the whys and wherefores of its own genre within itself, there were a few instances when this felt a little heavy-handed, as if the author were perhaps trying a little too hard to explore the topic of the genre itself and how people relate to it. While that certainly had a place in the theme of the story, there's a little bit of a tipping point for me whenever it comes across in a book that the writer feels they really understand what motivates a broad group of people in any particular way and either intentionally or unintentionally sets it out authoritatively as fact. I don't know why, perhaps it's just me, but it always rubs me the wrong way.

However, this one small irritant was in no way enough to cast too long a shadow over my enjoyment of the rest of the book. The characters were all well written and interesting, and the mysteries were as intricately interlaced, cleverly laid out and full of subtle clues as the author himself points out is essential to a successful entry in the genre. :)

I also feel like foreshadowing was used to great effect in this book. The fact that the present-day narrator tells us from the very beginning some part of what is to come but without any other context, keeps you looking at everything with an extra layer of interest and eases the otherwise just a little bit jarring transition between the "fictional" and the "real" that inevitably has to occur partway through the book.

One interesting thing is that although all the strings are tied up by the end in both sides of the story, I felt like the "real" half was, perhaps appropriately so, a little less tidy, a little less certain. That's odd considering it definitely is certain on the surface, but I can't help feeling like there may have been a few possible contributing elements of some sort that were overlooked, not by the author, but by the narrator, for personal reasons. Was she an entirely reliable narrator of her own tale? Perhaps. I hope so for her sake, and that it is only the cynical part of me that looks doubtfully upon a few aspects of how everything ended up and the terribly convenient way certain things came together to propel the direction her life took. I don't know if this trace of ambiguity was intentional on the author's part, or if I'm reading far too much into it, but in some way it works and feels fitting with the theme of tidy and untidy, reality vs fiction that the book explored.

At any rate, I very much enjoyed the book and laughingly have to admit, that if Atticus Pünd were a real series, I would actually look up and read the rest of the books.

Loved this book!

Would you consider the audio edition of Magpie Murders to be better than the print version?

Can't answer this; I didn't read the print version.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Susan was my favorite character.

What does Samantha Bond and Allan Corduner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Both of the narrators allowed me to be immersed in the story without distraction. I wasn't thinking about the narration; I was able to get involved in the story.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It was extremely enjoyable in that it was suspenseful. It didn't make me laugh or cry; it made me happy I had spent a credit.

Any additional comments?

I listened to this book on a trip across Texas to go take care of estate matters for a deceased family member. This book helped make a necessary but unwanted trip endurable.

what's the ending ironic?

this was a very clever story, and very well written. However I can't quite decide if the ending of the outer story was ironic or not. I'm just going to go with it was and call it a very satisfying cozy mystery.