Mostly Murders

Magpie Murders is book 1 in the Susan Ryeland series by Anthony Horowitz. Magpie Murders was published in 2016, and the TV series is a 6 episode TV series from 2022.

Alan Conway is a successful crime writer and a really unpleasant person, taking pleasure in basing his characters on real people, exposing their secrets and flaws for the world to see. Susan Ryeland is his editor who has to suffer his many snipes and gripes as his books sell really well. She is reading Conway’s latest book, The Magpie Murders, when Conway mysteriously dies. Realising that the manuscript is missing the ending, Susan begins a search for the missing pages which turns into a hunt for Conway’s murder.

A book within a book, Magpie Murders is not only the story of the editor Susan Ryeland investigating the murder of Alan Conway, it is also the story of Atticus Pünd, Alan Conway’s great detective, and his adventures in the fictional Magpie Murders book.

A whodunnit with lots of twist and turns, Susan Ryeland is a great amateur sleuth character and Atticus Pünd is a fascinating fictional detective. The book and the TV series have some differences, most notably concerning Susan Ryeland, who is given more emphasis in the TV series than she is in the book, while the book focusses more on Atticus Pünd and the fictional Magpie Murder book appearing in the real Magpie Murder book.

Mystery – Crime – Thriller