Review: "Marble Hall Murders," Anthony Horowitz

Book editor Susan Ryeland and detective Atticus Pünd are back for parallel adventures in the present day and 1955. And what a delight they are.

Susan’s comfortable London life came crashing down in Magpie Murders. In Moonflower Murders, she was lured back to England—briefly—from the Greek island hotel she was running with her love, Andreas. Now she’s back in the UK, enjoying her cozy basement flat, working freelance for a publisher, and once again tearing around the countryside in her beloved red MG.

All is going well—she has even added a cat to her household— until her boss presents her with a dubious project. Eliot Crace, whose two ventures into murder mysteries had bombed years before, is writing a “continuation” novel featuring Atticus Pünd. The PI’s creator, Alan Conway, whom Susan edited, is dead, and she thought the series was as well.

Given Crace’s earlier works, Susan is not optimistic. She dutifully reads Crace’s first 30,000 words—she has questions and suggestions, but admits to herself that it could work. Crace has even worked in some anagrams, that Alan Conway speciality.

Then she meets the author.

He’s a mess emotionally—a touchy, quick-tempered former drug addict. Worse, he seems to be using the Pünd book to get back at his family.

Eliot is the grandson of the famed children’s author Miriam Crace. Though she created a beloved global franchise for her tiny, do-gooder characters, The Littles, she was a tyrant to her family. She’s left scars on them.

One of the settings in the Pünd novel is a magnificent villa in the south of France. It’s owned by Lady Chalfont, who bears no resemblance to Miriam. But other members of her family clearly mirror the Craces, who all lived on an estate with grandma in Wiltshire. Lady Chalfont is murdered, and Eliot suggests Miriam was as well.

Susan is alarmed by Eliot’s motivations, and begins digging into the Craces’ past. It’s not pretty. The author goes off the rails and reveals his family secrets in a radio interview. Susan decides she has to walk—run?—away, but when a Crace is killed, she is the prime suspect. Now she is up to her neck in the situation.

As in the previous novels, there is an actual Atticus Pünd novel within these pages. This time it’s truncated, but, fear not, a satisfying conclusion is reached in both stories.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy, as well as the PBS dramatizations of the two previous installments (Marble Hall Murders is to come!) Not only do they feature wonderful performances by Leslie Manville and Tim McMullan, but Susan and Atticus interact in the films, as they both work to solve their intersecting mysteries.

I eagerly devoured the 579 pages of Marble Hall Murders and was sad to see it wrap up—though it did end happily. Thank goodness. After what she’s been through, Susan deserves it!