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Moonflower Murders

Anthony Horowitz

Start date: February 1, 2025

Finish date: February 28, 2025

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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What Members Thought

Feb 16, 2023 Sara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pleasure-reading, mystery, borrowed-from-library, murder-mystery

For me, Anthony Horowitz is one of the cleverest authors out there. He writes in a genre that I mostly feel I can take or leave, but I would hate to have left him unread. So much fun just trying to follow the clues and make the connections. Not a small measure of the enjoyment is in realizing what kind of mind he has to have in order to write something this complicated and not fail to leave a single element dangling or feeling a bit too contrived.

As with his previous novel, Magpie Murders, we a ...more

30 likes · Like · see review

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

Shelves: audio, 2020-read

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

23 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2020 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Having loved ‘Magpie Murders,’ I was delighted to read, and review, the second Susan Ryeland mystery, ‘Moonflower Murders.’ This novel opens with Susan living in Crete, with Andreas, and helping him run the family run hotel, The Polydorus. However, despite the sunshine, this is not the idyll is first appears. The hotel is exhausting, she misses publishing and feels that her relationship with Andreas is suffering. So, when a couple appear out of the blue to ask her to investigate their daughter’s ...more

20 likes · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2020 Maine Colonial rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, arc-or-digital-galley, british, favorite-authors

I received a free digital advance review copy from the publisher, via Netgalley.

As with its predecessor, Magpie Murders, this is constructed as a book within a book. A contemporary mystery featuring Susan Ryeland, who edited the Atticus Pünd mystery series, bookends an Atticus Pünd novel. The Atticus Pünd novels were also written in the current day, but they mimic the Golden Age of mystery style.

Because of the events in Magpie Murders, Susan is out of the book business and is now working her fin I received a free digital advance review copy from the publisher, via Netgalley.

As with its predecessor, Magpie Murders, this is constructed as a book within a book. A contemporary mystery featuring Susan Ryeland, who edited the Atticus Pünd mystery series, bookends an Atticus Pünd novel. The Atticus Pünd novels were also written in the current day, but they mimic the Golden Age of mystery style.

Because of the events in Magpie Murders, Susan is out of the book business and is now working her fingers to the bone with her lover, Andreas, running a hotel in Crete. She is asked by the parents of a missing young woman to return with them to England to stay at their hotel, Branlow Hall, and try to help them find their daughter Cecily. Why Susan? Well, it’s a bit of a stretch, frankly, but they believe the key to their daughter’s disappearance may be in the third Atticus Pünd book, Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, and they figure since the author, Alan Conway, is dead, the book’s editor is best placed to help. They explain to Susan that shortly before Cecily disappeared, she called them and said that the book made her see who really murdered a hotel guest years earlier, on the day of Cecily’s wedding on the hotel grounds. Susan and Andreas are strapped for cash, so Susan takes the case.

She quickly sees that there really is a relationship between Atticus Pünd Takes the Case and Branlow Hall. Alan Conway borrowed many of the book’s characters from people he met at the Branlow Hall. Susan finds that they are all unhappy about their unflattering characterizations and many are hostile to Susan, assuming she was in on Alan Conway’s literary cruelty. Susan also comes to believe that there is a connection between Cecily’s disappearance and the earlier murder at Barnlow Hall.

After the setup (which takes 37% of the book, if you’re tracking on an e-reader), we switch to the text of Atticus Pünd Takes the Case (43%), then back to Susan to wrap everything up (20%).

As with Magpie Murders, I became thoroughly engrossed in the Atticus Pünd mystery; so much so that it was a jolt to return to the present. While reading the book-within-a-book, I did manage to pick up some clues, but I admit I didn’t quite put them together enough to solve either the murder or Cecily’s disappearance. But Susan manages the task, with plenty of intrigue and some danger along the way.

The start of the book was a little slow, in part because I don’t find Susan and her personal life compelling. But the Pünd novel is great entertainment, and Susan’s windup of the case is a clever, satisfying resolution.

Here’s what I can’t help thinking about. Anthony Horowitz has now written two books-within-books where the meat in the sandwich is an Atticus Pünd novel. The fictional Alan Conway is supposed to have written nine Atticus Pünd books, including Magpie Murders and Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Does Anthony Horowitz plan to write seven more Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd books? I can’t imagine how he would manage seven more times to put Susan Ryeland in a position where she needs to read one of the books to solve a contemporary case, but I definitely want to see it. If not, I want to put in my request for Horowitz to write those other seven Pünd books as stand-alones. I’d be all over them. ...more

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Mar 25, 2021 Maxine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Susan Ryeland is hired by distraught parents to find their daughter, Cecily. She had phoned her parents about a murder that had occurred in their hotel several years before. The only clue they provide Susan - Cecily claimed that, having read Alan Conway’s book Atticus Pund Takes the Case which was based on the murder, she knows who was guilty. However, she vanished before she got a chance to reveal the guilty party. The police seem unable to find her and they hope Susan can do better based on he ...more

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May 06, 2022 Lynnie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, mystery, east-anglia, read-in-2022

Well! That was good! I really enjoyed this very clever book within a book. It even included a bonus case within the book within the book!
Anthony Horowitz's love of Agatha Christie novels shines through and his love of puzzles too - the end was ingenious. ...more

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Aug 13, 2024 Renee M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I enjoyed this just as much as Magpie Murders.

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 30, 2023 Jill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anthony-horowitz, jill-s-ninth-year-challenge

This is the second book in this series, and the author has done the same as the first, that is he has put a book within a book again. I think most of the book has been put in the blurb. Main Character Susan, running a small hotel in Crete, but more or less jumps at the chance of going back to England to investigate a crime connected with a book she had edited when she worked there. The parents of a missing woman are offering her a big sum of money, and they also say that their daughter had phone ...more

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