Magpie Murders

Anthony Horowitz has proven himself adept at writing in numerous styles and voices.

He adapted the Victorian charm of Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes novel, “House of Silk.” Horowitz gave the genre a dark spin with his follow-up “Moriarty.”

In 2015, he switched to another English hero, Ian Fleming’s James Bond, with the novel “Trigger Mortis.”

With his latest novel, “Magpie Murders,” he creates a whodunit within a whodunit — one part Agatha Christie-style mystery, one part a more modern crime case.

The story opens with a few pages regarding Susan Ryeland, a book editor, settling into reading a new manuscript by her publishing house’s bestselling mystery author, Alan Conway.

The book then switches to Conway’s manuscript. For the next couple hundred pages, readers follow the post-World War II adventures of German private investigator Atticus Pund as he investigates the deaths of a lord and his housekeeper in a British mansion.

Atticus Pund is a detective similar to Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, etc. Pund is an eccentric, brilliant loner whose passion is solving crimes. Though Horowitz writes as the fictional author of the manuscript, he has a flair for the old-school whodunit — many readers wouldn’t mind reading more Pund books.

But after about 200 pages, and as Pund is ready to reveal his solution to the crime, the book abruptly shifts back to the book editor. It seems the final chapter of the Atticus Pund book is missing. Susan must not only find the final chapter but she is soon trying to solve the murder of a colleague.

A mystery within a mystery. Even the narratives are numbered differently in the book; for example, Susan’s opening is about 3 pages, then the Pund manuscript starts at a new page 1. When the manuscript ends, the page numbers revert to the single digits as the story returns to Susan for the next couple of hundred pages, etc.

Throughout Horowitz adapts his writing to fit each section and sections within sections. He performs a great balancing act with two competing and interlocking narratives. He pokes fun and offers insights into the mystery genre while also paying homage to it.

“Magpie Murders” is a must-read for mystery lovers.