Book: Moonflower Murders
Author: Anthony Horowitz
Pages: 592
Read on: Kindle
Read in: 5-6 hours
Plot Summary: Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend. But life isn't as idyllic as it should be: exhausted by the responsibility of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, Susan is beginning to miss her literary life in London - even though her publishing career once entangled her in a lethal literary murder plot.
So when an English couple come to visit with tales of a murder that took place in a hotel the same day their daughter Cecily was married there, Susan can't help but find herself fascinated.
And when they tell her that Cecily has gone missing a few short hours after reading Atticus Pund Takes The Case, a crime novel Susan edited some years previously, Susan knows she must return to London to find out what has happened.
The clues to the murder and to Cecily's disappearance must lie within the pages of this novel.
But to save Cecily, Susan must place her own life in mortal danger.
Things I Liked:
1. Two murder mysteries in one book! Are you kidding me?! What is not to love about that?! Especially, if it is written by Anthony Horowitz, who is wickedly clever and has written books that I have greatly enjoyed in the past! Colour me excited!
2. I was very happy to meet Susan Ryeland again. She was our accidental sleuth and hero in Horowitz's Magpie Murders and I really liked her voice and her use of 'every (wo)man' logic to solve murders. It was nice to see the characters through her eyes and watch her catch inconsistencies and channel her inner Poirot or Miss Marple to solve the case of Cecily's disappearance.
3. This book contains another mystery book in it. It is one written by Susan Ryeland's best selling author- Alex Conway and features his star detective Atticus Pünd, who incidentally seems to be modelled after Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. So, that is all kinds of nice! I liked how the two murder mysteries are connected, even though, at the face of it, the two stories are completely different. Atticus Pünd Takes a Case is set in a seaside town in Devonshire and involves the murder of a popular Hollywood actress in the early 1950s, whereas the murder in Cecily's hotel eight years ago was that of an advertising executive from Australia, who had a two-day booking. Yet, the way these two stories are connected is very nicely done!
4. The enjoyed the 'book' within this book quite a bit! Atticus Pünd Takes a Case has interesting, well developed characters and a nice twist or two. It is really a treat to read two different yet somehow connected murder mysteries.
5. There are several red herrings in both cases, which I always appreciate. The author keeps you guessing about the whys and hows of the cases right until the very end.
Things I Didn't Like: Not one thing!
Rating: 5/5
This is a really wonderful book! Two murder mysteries, a great bunch of characters and really good writing! Read it!
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