Moonflower Murders in Reading the 20th Century

Sep 05, 2020 Asakosophia rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-read, audio

Update 2024: I'm not sure why, but my original review was removed. I have recopied it below as I had the text saved elsewhere. I think it is important to know going in what you are getting.

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What in tarnation did I just read? Book 1 was mildly unbelievable, but still enjoyable.. THIS BOOK was preposterous.

The most cringeworthy component wasn't even the heinous "reveal" - it was the seriously prudish and homophobic overtones.

Pass me the bucket. ...more

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Feb 13, 2025 G L rated it liked it · review of another edition

Moonflower Murders
Anthony Horowitz

I enjoyed this somewhat more than its precursor, Magpie Murders. It’s better organized, and—as one would expect but to be honest doesn’t always get in a sequel—the backstory including Alan Conway is more developed, as is the character of Susan Ryeland, the editor/detective/narrator.

I like the concept of this series. Having an editor turn into a detective who has to solve murders is a stroke of genius, because editing entails a good bit of detecting within the ma Moonflower Murders
Anthony Horowitz

I enjoyed this somewhat more than its precursor, Magpie Murders. It’s better organized, and—as one would expect but to be honest doesn’t always get in a sequel—the backstory including Alan Conway is more developed, as is the character of Susan Ryeland, the editor/detective/narrator.

I like the concept of this series. Having an editor turn into a detective who has to solve murders is a stroke of genius, because editing entails a good bit of detecting within the manuscript (starting with, what in the world is that writer trying to say). I also like Susan as a character. She stands in contrast to the detectives in the golden age of detective writing that Horowitz’ series is in conversation with, because she lives in a different society, one in which women being educated and having professions is normal. This inverts the conventions as I have encountered them. Susan is a sympathetic and appealing person, someone I could imagine chatting with at a gathering. Well, I could imagine that if I were any good at chatting with strangers at a gathering. In all honesty I’d probably not be at the gathering because there would be too many strangers, adn if I were, I’d be trapped in a corner, but I would be wishing I could figure out how to start a conversation with her. This is all good fun. I think that beyond good fun, a close reading might show that Horowitz is saying something about the role of women within the genre of detective fiction.

Unfortunately, I found the Alan Conway novel unbearably tedious, so that as I made my way through the 7 hours of the audiobook that it occupies, I just wanted this part to be over. I really stopped paying attention partway through. It was mind-numbing. By the time the Conway novel-within-a-novel ended, I no longer cared whether I’d correctly guessed the solution (I had, mostly). Worse, I didn’t even care what the novel revealed about the solution to the Moonflower Murders. Also, by then I had a hard time reviving my interest in Susan Ryeland. I really do like her as a character, but the denouement of the mystery she was hired to solve really didn’t matter to me by then, and it went on. And on. And on, in the most dreadful parody of those drawing room scenes in which the detective, having failed to find enough evidence, presents their suppositions and hunches, going detail by detail and suspect by suspect, so that the question is whether the reader or the murderer will break first. Is Horowitz twitting this convention, that an individual who has planned and flawlessly executed one or more murders in cold blood would break down when confronted by a “I know it has to be you even though I have no evidence”?

I read this while my country is experiencing an authoritarian coup, and this gave me 18 and a half hours of something else to think about. Even 7 hours of complete boredom beats watching a dictator take over while more than half of one’s friends go about their normal activities because they can’t be bothered to resist. I’m grateful for that at least. And I enjoy Susan Ryeland enough that I’ll probably come back for the third installment when it becomes available in the US.
...more

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Feb 05, 2025 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In this sequel to Magpie Murders, Horowitz has hit his stride and has so much fun with the premise: a modern-day editor is called in to investigate a cold-case murder because the clues to the truth might lie in a book she worked on with a now-dead author.

As with the first novel, we have a book-within-the-book structure but here I felt the insert works far better - it's kept together so we're not skipping between stories and have all the pleasure of seeing how the fictional author, Alan Conway, ...more

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Oct 25, 2020 Ruth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-detective

A fantastic follow up to Magpie Murders! There are so many things to love about this book - the characters, the plotting, the book within a book which gives you more mysteries to solve. I also love the puzzles that Anthony Horowitz includes which add an extra layer to the book and just made me want to go back to the beginning and read it all again.

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Jul 13, 2021 Lady Fancifull rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wickedly playful Horowitz; spiteful Alan Conway; thoroughly decent Susan Ryeland

I adore Horowitz’s clever, entertaining writing. I never see the surprises a-springing – or if I do, can’t tease out why till Horowitz does it for me. I adore his clever plotting, brilliant writing, and the deft sleight of hand tricks he dazzles with.

And Moonflower Murders was no exception. Firstly, I was very pleased indeed to meet Susan Ryeland again. A very likeable book editor, she was Alan Conway’s literary agen Wickedly playful Horowitz; spiteful Alan Conway; thoroughly decent Susan Ryeland

I adore Horowitz’s clever, entertaining writing. I never see the surprises a-springing – or if I do, can’t tease out why till Horowitz does it for me. I adore his clever plotting, brilliant writing, and the deft sleight of hand tricks he dazzles with.

And Moonflower Murders was no exception. Firstly, I was very pleased indeed to meet Susan Ryeland again. A very likeable book editor, she was Alan Conway’s literary agent. Conway, a not particularly pleasant man, wrote a series of books (very clever ones) featuring his detective Atticus Pund. We met both Ryeland and Conway in Magpie Murders, and earlier novel by Horowitz. Things got more than a little difficult for Ryeland, so I was pleased to find her doing well, if a little bored, in Crete, with her life, and now business partner Andreas, a man as decent as she is.

Ryeland gets contacted by a couple who owned a country house hotel. Eight years ago, a horrific murder happened there. Conway inveigled his way into the hotel, and wrote a lightly disguised Atticus Pund mystery around the events. Jump forward to the present time, and the visiting couple have contacted Ryeland because their married daughter has vanished. What has any of this to do with a retired literary editor, now hotel manager, living in Crete? Simply that their daughter discovered some secret in Conway’s disguised ‘fiction’ of the murder, which put her in danger. She made a phone call to her parents, clearly scared, and has now vanished. Ryeland, who knows Conway’s work and methods better than anyone, is asked to unravel the mystery and hopefully find the daughter. For which services a fairly hefty sum is offered.

Confused? Don’t be – a marvellous read awaits. In fact, two marvellous reads. The opening and closing sections belong to Ryeland, first person narrative. The middle section is the book she re-reads to try and spot what was the dangerous realisation the missing woman spotted, the revelation of who the original real murderer, disguised in Conway’s ‘Atticus Pund Takes The Case’ was – or is.

Horowitz is an absolute dab hand, a crafted master at writing in many different voices, so Conway’s book is completely different in style and tone from Ryeland’s account.

Magical! A perfect ‘Golden Age Crime’ type murder mystery, wrapped up in another. Two for the price of one. ...more

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Sep 17, 2021 Pamela rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible, crime-other

This book follows the same concept as the previous book, Magpie Murders as there are two connected murder stories - one a modern day murder, and the second a Golden Age mystery embedded inside the first. The ‘sleuth’ for the first is Susan Ryeland, former editor of Alan Conway’s Atticus Pünd mysteries, now living in Crete with her partner Andreas, working all hours to try to make a success of their new restaurant, and missing her involvement in the literary world.

Susan receives a visit from a ...more

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