Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland #1)

by Anthony Horowitz

Actually, I hate that word. Boyfriend. Especially when it’s used to describe a fifty-two-year-old, twice-divorced man.

But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it. But Magpie Murders

‘One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung—a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there. A line of questioning that turns out to be irrelevant still has the power to bring you nearer to your goal. There

And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us—the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan’s sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn’t read him at all.

The endlessly protracted financial crisis of this summer and the year before might have dropped out of the British newspapers—how many times can you predict the total collapse of a country?—but

I’ve seen it in so many new writers, this belief that publishers are any different—smarter, more successful than them—when actually we’re just shuffling along, hoping we’ll still have a job at the end of the month. ‘I

He asked me how Alan had died and I told him that the police suspected suicide. He looked pained at that. A man so full of life himself, he would find it hard to understand anyone who could choose to do away with theirs.

There are some relationships that succeed only because they are impossible, that actually need unhappiness to continue.

Our successful authors jumped ship as fast as they could, which was a little disappointing but not entirely surprising. You don’t want to be published by someone who might murder you.