Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders
© 2017 Stormbreaker Productions Ltd.
Harper Perennial
ISBN 978-0-06-2623-4


This is a real tour de force, but it’s also remarkably difficult to write a review without including something that might be a spoiler.  So I’m not going to try to do any sort of plot recapitulation—you’ll have to read it for yourself.  I will say that the story has more twists and turns than a Grand Prix auto racing course.  I will also say, because it quickly becomes obvious, that one aspect of the book owes a lot to Agatha Christie.


Horowitz has created a sterling cast of characters, providing them with interesting, and relevant, back stories ((including insights into their characters and their work lives and their personal lives).  He has also created settings, from small-town England to London, that both support and deepen his narrative.  The investigations are handled nicely, and the denouement flows neatly out of what has gone before.  And, for those of you who like this sort of thing (I do), he provides us with some clever, sometimes initially hidden, wordplay.


I have read, and enjoyed, three of his other books (The House of Silk, Moriarty, and The Word Is Murder); this is a step above them.  And there are three more (The Sentence is Death, Trigger Mortis, and Forever and a Day) that I’m about to make sure I have.  I encourage you to do the same.