Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 14

Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby #BookReview

Beauregard “Bug” Montage: honest mechanic, loving husband, devoted parent. He’s no longer the criminal he once was – the sharpest wheelman on the east coast, infamous from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida.

But when his respectable life begins to crumble, a shady associate comes calling with a clean, one-time job: a diamond heist promising a get-rich payout. Inexorably drawn to the driver’s seat – and haunted by the ghost of his outlaw father – Bug is yanked back into a savage world of bullets and betrayal, which soon endangers all he holds dear… Like Breaking Bad in a high-speed collision with Drive, this stunning debut holds up a cracked mirror to the woozy ideals of the American dream – a dazzling, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race and a scarred, self-destructive masculinity

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Title: Blacktop Wasteland | Author: SA Cosby | Publisher: Flatiron Books | Pages: 320 | ISBN: 9781250252678 | Publication date: 14th July 2020 | Source: Self-purchased

‘Blacktop Wasteland’ blew me away. It’s gripping, brilliantly cinematic, thoughtful and moving. The plot and themes aren’t desperately original, but it doesn’t matter when the writing is this good. In fact, the modern retread of well-worn noir tropes gives the book a classic vibe that works perfectly. The result is a masterpiece of crime fiction that’s lean, mean and rockets along at 100 miles an hour.

The protagonist is Beauregard (or Bug), a black man in a Southern US state with a criminal past he’s trying to leave behind him and a family he’s desperate to protect. When events conspire against him, he finds himself involved in the robbery of a jewellery store. Naturally, things don’t go to plan and he finds himself fighting to save himself and his family.

Like I said at the start, it’s a familiar story, but SA Cosby tells it so well that it feels brand new. Beauregard is a getaway driver, and I think the driving scenes in this book are the best I’ve ever read. They have the visceral intensity of the best movie car chases, tyres squealing and metal crunching as Bug fights the road and his enemies. Cars are weapons in this book as often as guns are, and they’re used to lethal effect.thought

The pacing of the book is just as good as the action scenes. At 300 pages it’s the perfect length, and the plot unfolds beautifully. If it was a movie it would be 90 minutes and you’d be on the edge of your seat for every one of them.

Cosby weaves in a commentary on racism in America with a skill that makes it thought-provoking without ever overwhelming. Even more impressive is his take on the kind of toxic masculinity that is so common in this kind of thriller. Bug is a man at war with himself, torn between the memory of his outlaw father and his desire to be a good parent to his children. At times Cosby’s writing on the subject veers close to cliché, but he always stays on the right side of the line and the result is effective and thoughtful.

‘Blacktop Wasteland’ really is the full package. The best crime novel I’ve read this year without a shadow of a doubt. Do yourself a favour and pick up a copy today.  

5/5

Moonflower Murder by Anthony Horowitz #BookReview

Featuring his famous literary detective Atticus Pund and Susan Ryeland, hero of the worldwide bestseller Magpie Murders, a brilliantly complex literary thriller by Anthony Horowitz. The follow-up to Magpie Murders.

Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is living the good life. She is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her longterm boyfriend Andreas. It should be everything she’s always wanted – but is it? She’s exhausted with the responsibilities of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, and truth be told she’s beginning to miss her old life in London.

And then a couple – the Trehearnes – come to stay, and the story they tell about an unfortunate murder that took place on the same day and in the same hotel in which their daughter was married, is such a strange and mysterious one that Susan finds herself increasingly fascinated by it. And when the Trehearnes tell her that their daughter is now missing, Susan knows that she must return to London and find out what really happened …

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Title: Moonflower Murders | Author: Anthony Horowitz | Series: Susan Ryeland #2 | Publisher: Century | Pages: 400 | ISBN: 9781529124347 | Publication date: 20th August 2020 | Source: NetGalley

I was nervous starting ‘Moonflower Murders’ for two reasons. I really liked the first book in the series, ‘Magpie Murders’ with its ingenious book within a book format and its affectionate dissection of the mystery genre, but I had no idea how Anthony Horowitz could pull off the same trick again without it feeling forced. Secondly, I loved his first Sherlock Holmes novel, ‘The House of Silk’, but found the follow up ‘Moriarty’ a dull and confusing mess. Fortunately, I needn’t have worried. I’m not sure ‘Moonflower Murders’ is quite as good as the book that preceded it, but it is a credible and very enjoyable sequel.

It’s set a couple of years after ‘Magpie Murders’, with book editor turned sleuth pulled out of her relatively normal life when a couple approach her asking to investigate a murder. The crime took place a few years ago at the hotel they run, with one of the staff convicted for it. However, recent events, and a secret hidden in a book by none other than Alan Conway have caused them to doubt the conviction. It’s a fairly elegant way to set things up for a double mystery in the style of the first book. Again we get both a “real” mystery investigated by Susan, and a fictional one featuring Conway’s creation, Atticus Pünd.

‘Moonflower Murders’ is another very enjoyable novel from Horowitz. It’s populated with twists and turns, a bit of politics (around the demonisation of Eastern European immigrants by the tabloid press), romance, humour and good old fashioned murder mysteries. What it lacks, compared to the first book, is a deeper examination of the crime genre. Perhaps Horowitz felt he’d already covered that, and to be fair he had, quite brilliantly. The book feels slightly inferior to its predecessor because of that, but that’s not to say it isn’t a great read. Whether Horowitz can pull off the same trick a third time remains to be scene, but I certainly hope he tries.

4/5

Thriller Corner: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson #BookReview

What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love? One woman struggles to choose between her honor and her heart in this enthralling espionage drama that deftly hops between New York and West Africa.

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic, revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Thomas is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving over the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.

In the year that follows, Marie will observe Thomas, seduce him, and ultimately have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.

Inspired by true events — Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara” — this novel knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.

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Title: American Spy | Author: Lauren Wilkinson | Publisher: Random House | Pages: 292 | ISBN: 9780812998955 | Publication date: 12th February 2019 | Source: Self-purchased

‘American Spy’ plays a bit like Le Carre. It’s deeper than the average thriller, political, and populated with convincing characters with credible and intriguing motivations. It’s also interesting because its heroine (and author) are black women, something that’s unusual in spy fiction. Despite its many strengths I found that it lacked tension and as a result it failed as a thriller. That’s not to say it isn’t worth your time though.

It starts strongly, with its narrator and heroine, Marie Mitchell, fighting off an intruder into her home in the 1990s and then fleeing with her twin sons. The rest of the book is told in flashback, an extended memoir, written by Marie to her sons, explaining the events that led up to the attack. The action takes place in the 1980s, when Marie was a skilled FBI agent, who was recruited by a shadowy CIA agent to befriend and seduce a visiting African leader, Thomas Sankara. Thomas is the communist president of Burkina Faso, and someone the US authorities are keen to undermine. The fact that the politically savvy Marie, a black woman operating in a white man’s world, comes to sympathise with her target is no surprise, Lauren Wilkinson manages to make their relationship a believable one though, and Marie’s internal struggles work well.

The format of the book helps, giving the author every reason to allow Marie to be as introspective as possible. The books is more an examination of love, motherhood and loyalty than it does a spy novel. It succeeds well at that, but the action and the kind of tradecraft that I enjoy in espionage fiction is definitely lacking. The book has a lot to say about the aggressive interventionism of US foreign policy in the 70s and 80s too, and I found those elements interesting. They didn’t, unfortunately, overcome the lack of narrative drive though. ‘American Spy’ ends up being a book that is more interesting than it is enjoyable. It contains a lot of food for thought, but fails to make that into a really satisfying meal.

3/5

Deacon King Kong by James McBride #BookReview

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters–caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York–overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

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Title: Deacon King Kong | Author: James McBride | Publisher: Riverhead Books | Pages: 371 | ISBN: 9780735216723 | Publication date: 3rd March 2020 | Source: NetGalley

‘Deacon King Kong’ is one of those books that I wanted to like a lot more than I did. It has a great deal going for it, particularly a great sense of place and a broad cast of fascinating and entertaining characters, but somehow it failed to grip me in a meaningful way and I found myself rushing through it.

The book takes place in New York in 1969 and starts with the shooting of a teenage drug dealer by an alcoholic local man known as Sportcoat. He’s the Deacon King Kong of the title, active in the church but also hopelessly addicted to King Kong, a homemade liquor that he swigs throughout the book. McBride takes that dramatic opening and zooms out to explore it’s impacts on the community the assailant and victim live in. It’s a rundown Brooklyn neighbourhood populated with African Americans, Latinx, Italians and Jews living cheek by jowl and surviving despite their poverty.

What works brilliantly about the book is McBride’s depiction of the area. It lives and breathes on the page, full of life and colour. The characters are great too, and the book is populated with a diverse range of memorable people going about their lives. Some of the events are shocking, some are amusing, but they all feel real.

And yet somehow the book didn’t work for me. There is a plot running through it about a search for a mysterious hidden treasure. McBride uses it to pull the various characters together but it never really sucked me in. The book definitely has a lot to admire about it, but I couldn’t help feeling it could have been better. I ended up finding it a bit too similar to other things (Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ being one) and that diminished its impact and grip on my attention.

3/5

The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton #BookReview

Anthony Ray Hinton was poor and black when he was convicted of two murders he hadn’t committed. For the next three decades he was trapped in solitary confinement in a tiny cell on death row.

Eventually his case was taken up by the award-winning lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, who managed to have him exonerated, though it took 15 years for this to happen. How did Hinton cope with the mental and emotional torture of his situation, and emerge full of compassion and forgiveness? This is a story of hope and the resilience of the human spirit.

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Title: The Sun Does Shine | Author: Anthony Ray Hinton | Publisher: St Martin’s Press | Pages: 272 | ISBN: 9781250124715 | Publication date: 27th March 2018 | Source: Self-purchased

It might sound cheesy to say it, but ‘The Sun Does Shine’ really does feel like a life changing book. Written but Anthony Ray Hinton, a black American from Alabama who was falsely convicted of murder and spent over a quarter of a century on death row, it’s an incredibly moving, wise and insightful work.
Ray, as he is known, was arrested for the robbery of a restaurant and the attempted murder of its manager. This crime took place when he was working as a cleaner in a locked warehouse miles from the restaurant. Prosecutors then also tied him to two similar robbery homicides and he was convicted on flimsy forensic evidence. Ray protested his innocence throughout, and was fortunate enough to eventually meet a crusading lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, who took up his case.
It’s clear from the start that race played a huge part in Ray’s conviction, as did economics. It seems unlikely that a wealthier white man, with access to a decent legal defence, would ever have been sent to prison. The amazing thing is the forgiveness that Ray shows to those responsible for robbing him of so many years of his life. His compassion really is inspirational.
This is a wonderful and very moving book. Heartbreakingly honest in its reporting of the conditions death row inmates face and the psychological toll the constant threat of state sanctioned murder takes on innocent and guilty convicts alike. Ray is under no illusion that many of the men he was incarcerated with were responsible for monstrous crimes, but writes passionately about the fact that their crimes don’t mean they aren’t human beings.
Some of the legal detail of his appeal can be difficult to follow at times, but the underlying message is clear. This is a book about the importance of compassionate justice and the need to address the appalling racial and economic inequalities that persist in the US. Ray’s hope and love for his fellow man shine through like a beacon. It’s also, at times, beautifully written, with clear, thoughtful prose that is packed with emotion.
Crime fiction so often focuses on the pursuit of the guilty and tends to ignore the impact of miscarriages of justice on the innocent. Reading an alternative view such as this was fascinating. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

5/5

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Trick Baby by Iceberg Slim #BookReview

Trick Baby charts the rise of White Folks, a white Negro who uses his colour as a trump card in the tough game of the Con. Blue-eyed, light-haired, and white-skinned, White Folks is the most incredible con man the ghetto ever spawned, a hustler in the jungle of Southside Chicago where only the sharpest survive. With his partner Blue, an old hand who teaches him the tricks of the trade, White Folks rises to the top of his profession. The cons he pulls off get more and more lucrative and dangerous until one day they go too far….

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Title: Trick Baby | Author: Iceberg Slim | Publisher: Canongate Books | Pages: 284 | ISBN: 9781847674319 | Publication date: 1969 | Source: Self-purchased

‘Trick Baby’ is an American crime novel from the 1960s from black writer Robert Beck, better known as Iceberg Slim. Beck was a pimp and hustler turned author who became an important voice in African American writing in the 60s and 70s. Two of his books were filmed and they’ve been championed by more recent figures in black culture like Snoop Dogg and Ice T.
His first book was a heavily autobiographical novel, ‘Pimp’. ‘Trick Baby’ was his second and tells the story of White Folks, a young man with a white father and a black mother who is pale skinned enough to pass as white. Set mostly in the 1930s and 40s, it follows White Folks from childhood and through his life as a young man who falls into the life of a conman in Chicago. It’s a book that is packed with incident, with detailed and fascinating descriptions of the cons Folks and his partner run. That side of the book makes for very entertaining reading and the plot charts Folks’ growing success and relationships, in particular with a wealthy white woman.
Race plays a big part in the book, with the main character finding himself out of place in both the white and black worlds. It’s handled with passion and the prejudice expressed by the white characters is horrifyingly effective. The gap between the two worlds is stark and the depiction of the slum areas of Chicago is memorable. It’s an often moving read, and Folks is a sympathetic character for all his flaws. His relationship with his mother is particularly well handled, and the source of his many insecurities. That conflict, between the confident trickster and the uncertain young man, is at the heart of the book and it works well.
The treatment of female and LGBT characters is hard to take, but the book manages to tread the narrow line between showing prejudice and actively condoning it. The writing is a little rough at times, but it has a raw power that fits the subject matter and makes for a compelling read.

4/5

Secrets of a Serial Killer by Rosie Walker #BookReview

A serial killer has been terrorising Lancaster for decades, longer than should ever have been possible. The police are baffled, eluded at every turn by the killer whose victims span generations. Speculation is rife among the true crime forums; is someone passing on their gruesome trade?

Every local mother’s worst nightmare has become Helen Summerton’s reality; he’s taken her daughter, Zoe. As the clock runs down so do her chances of survival. Can Helen unearth the secrets of the killer before it’s too late?

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Title: Secrets of a Serial Killer | Author: Rosie Walker | Publisher: One More Chapter | Pages: 400 | ISBN: 9780008399962 | Publication date: 17th July 2020 | Source: NetGalley

Some crime novels strive for gritty realism whilst some just want you to have a good time. Rosie Walker’s ‘Secrets of a Serial Killer’ falls firmly in the second camp, but if you can suspend your disbelief you’ll have fun with it. It particularly harks back to the wave of such books that came out in the 1990s in the wake of ‘Silence of the Lambs’, so if you’re a fan of those this will be right up your street.
The book is set in Lancaster in the north of England and focuses on a series of disappearances of teenage girls. Contributors to an online true crime forum are linking these back to two historic serial killers, whilst the police seem to be doing little to investigate. Against that backdrop, the scope of the book is incredibly tight. It narrows in on two families who live next door to each other. Helen, an architect working on the development of an abandoned local asylum, and her teenage daughter Zoe live in one house. Next door to them we have a journalist and her son Thomas and visiting niece. The three characters I’ve named, along with the initially anonymous killer, are the central characters of the story, with the book told in alternating chapters from their perspectives.
I ended up liking this more than I expected to. That limited scope felt too small at first, but it results in a very focused and taut book. The killer is somewhat cliched, but their back story is intriguingly grotesque. The other characters are far more believable and easy to relate to. I ended up really caring about them and rooting for them in their fight to survive.
This is a book that might stretch credibility at times, but overcomes that by being extremely readable and very, very exciting. The use of locations is excellent, and really adds to the atmosphere, with parts of the story being genuinely creepy. For much of the story, Rosie Walker relies on the threat of violence, rather than actual brutality, to build suspense. This works well and means that when blood is spilled, it has added impact.
‘Secrets of a Serial Killer’ isn’t without its flaws, but it succeeds despite them as a result of good writing and relatable characters. I was quickly swept up by it and couldn’t stop turning the pages.

4/5

Dark Waters by GR Halliday #BookReview

Annabelle loves to drive. It helps her escape her world, her past. Speeding on a mountain road in the Scottish Highlands, she sees a little girl step out in front of her. She swerves to avoid her. The next thing Annabelle remembers is waking up in a dark, damp room. A voice from the corner of the room says ‘The Doctor will see you now’.

Scott is camping in the woodlands in the Scottish Highlands – but in the middle of the night, he hears something outside his tent. When he goes out to have a look, a little girl is standing among the trees, staring right at him. Scott is never seen again.

When a dismembered body is discovered, DI Monica Kennedy gets called to the scene immediately. After six months away from the Serious Crimes team, they need her back on board.

As Monica searches for the murderer, another body is found. Monica knows the signs . . . She’s on the hunt for a serial killer.

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Title: Dark Waters | Author: GR Halliday | Series: Monica Kennedy #2| Publisher: Harvill Secker | Pages: 384 | ISBN: 9781787301436| Publication date: 9th July 2020 | Source: Netgalley

‘Dark Waters’ is the second DI Monica Kennedy novel from new author GR Halliday. Like the first book, ‘From the Shadows’ which I reviewed recently, it’s very much a mixed bag. It’s part rural horror novel and part police procedural. The problem is that whilst the horror is gruesomely brilliant, the detecting is pretty dull. And unfortunately it’s the detecting that gets the most pages.

The two competing strands are set up right from the start. A young woman, Anabelle, who is touring the Highlands is assaulted and kidnapped, whilst DI Kennedy is called in to investigate a horrific murder. The victim has had his limbs crudely amputated and it isn’t long before a similarly mutilated corpse is found. From that point the stories run in parallel until they inevitably come together at the end. Like Sally in Tobe Hooper’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, Anabelle is subjected to a series of grotesque psychological and physical assaults at the hands of her bizarre rural captors. Meanwhile, Monica Kennedy and colleagues investigate the double murders, doggedly following leads and battling demons from their pasts like all modern cops.

The horror is quite brilliant. It’s really creepy, with the details of Anabelle’s assailants gradually teased out in a really effective way. The detail is graphic and horrific, but it’s the anticipation of horrors to come that really sinks into your bones. Contrasted against this vivid terror, the more traditional crime elements of the book are pale and boring. I fund myself turning Monica’s pages as quickly as I could to get back to Anabelle’s.

This imbalance was present in ‘From the Shadows’ too, but it’s even starker here and makes me wish that Halliday would turn his hand to a pure horror novel. Sadly, crime is where the money is in modern publishing, so I suspect that won’t happen. One other thing that’s worth calling out is Halliday’s great sense of place. Just as in his first book, he makes great use of the windswept Highland landscape and gives the horror a credible sense of isolation that makes Anabelle’s ordeal more convincing.

Like ‘From the Shadows’, ‘Dark Waters’ ends up with 3 stars from me. Parts of it would have got a much higher rating, but others drag it down.

3/5

From the Shadows by GR Halliday #BookReview

Sixteen-year-old Robert arrives home late. Without a word to his dad, he goes up to his bedroom. Robert is never seen alive again.

A body is soon found on the coast of the Scottish Highlands. Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy stands by the victim in this starkly beautiful and remote landscape. Instinct tells her the case won’t begin and end with this one death.

Meanwhile, Inverness-based social worker Michael Bach is worried about one of his clients whose last correspondence was a single ambiguous text message; Nichol Morgan has been missing for seven days.

As Monica is faced with catching a murderer who has been meticulously watching and waiting, Michael keeps searching for Nichol, desperate to find him before the killer claims another victim.

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Title: From the Shadows | Author: GR Halliday | Series: Monica Kennedy #1| Publisher: Harvill Secker | Pages: 432 | ISBN: 9781787301412| Publication date: 18th April 2019| Source: Netgalley

I tend to write reviews in my head when I’m reading a book and the one for ‘From the Shadows’ changed multiple times. At first it was “2 stars, badly written, DNF”, then it was “3 stars, competent but painfully familiar”, but towards the end it was “4 stars, this is actually really good”. It’s fair to say then, that ‘From the Shadows’ is a mixed bag. Ultimately though, it was good enough that I’m eager to read GR Halliday’s next book.
The plot revolves around the abduction and murder of a teenage boy and the investigation of that crime by police detective, Monica Kennedy, and a social worker, Michael Bach. It took me some time to get into the book. The beginning has some good parts, the details of the abduction are chilling, but something about the prose really turned me off. The middle third worked better for me, but is a bit convoluted. The book is too long at almost 450 pages and I think this is where the editor’s knife was needed most. Fortunately, the final act is really gripping. A book that had seemed like an also ran finally found its feet. Plot and character development suddenly clicks into place and the result is great. A book I’d almost given up on became one I couldn’t put down.
I’m not sure why the book was such a rollercoaster for me. Looking back many of its strengths were clear from the start. It’s set in northern Scotland and Halliday makes good use of the location. Everything feels suitably remote and windswept and that lends the book a desperate atmosphere at times that works well. It has two strong leads in Kennedy and Bach. They are very different in many ways, but similar in their complex mix of determination and self doubt. The depiction of the villain and his crimes works well too, he is mysterious and his insanity is convincing enough to be genuinely disturbing. I think perhaps the problem is that the market for this kind of thing is so massively crowded at the moment that any book really has to shine to lift it’s head above the herd. ‘From the Shadows’ does that at times, but maybe not often enough.

3/5

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz #BookReview

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 bestselling 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 pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

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Title: Magpie Murders | Author: Anthony Horowitz | Series: Susan Ryeland #1| Publisher: Harper | Pages: 498 | ISBN: 9780062645227| Publication date: 6th June 2017| Source: Self-purchased

‘Magpie Murders’ is a near perfect British whodunnit that pays affectionate homage to the genre. It contains not one but two accomplished and entertaining mysteries, as well as a tonne of enjoyable incidental detail about publishing and the genre.
What makes the book so much fun is it’s format. It features a book within a book, ‘Magpie Murders’, by a fictional author Alan Conroy. This is an Agatha Christie-inspired affair about German detective Atticus Pünd investigating a murder in an English village in the 1950s. Around this Anthony Horowitz writes a modern day mystery with Conroy’s editor Susan Ryeland as the protagonist. To say much more than that about the plots would be to give too much away, but any fan of Christie and her imitators is in for a treat.
Horowitz is clearly an aficionado of the genre and this shines through on every page. The 50s set story is a head-scratching delight filled with enjoyable archetypes – the arrogant landowner, the troubled priest, etc. The characters in the present day story are more believable, but just as entertaining. Susan’s personal life gets a fair bit to attention, but that never detracts from the story and helps round her out.
Most importantly, the mysteries and their respective denouements both work perfectly. They’re engaging and suitably puzzling and Horowitz crams the book with clues and conundrums. When things come to a conclusion it’s a logical and satisfying one. The solutions to a couple of the strands had me grinning with pleasure at their ingenuity.
The use of an editor as the narrator for the modern story allows Horowitz to examine the whodunnit genre and dig into its tropes. This extra level of detail works brilliantly adding a lot to the book and cementing it as a book that examines the genre rather than just being of it.
If ‘Magpie Murders’ has a fault it’s that the red herrings scattered through each end up feeling a tiny bit laboured when the truth behind each of them is revealed. That’s a minor criticism though, when the ride is so much fun. If you love mysteries, you’ll love this book.

4/5