by Pa Rock
Reader
Even though I have long regarded Anthony Horowitz as one of my favorite writers, it was not until recently that I actually read one of his works. Horowitz, you see, is known primarily for being a writer of television programming, and his work in that medium is in a class by itself - a very high class. While the television credits of Anthony Horowitz are too numerous to preclude any type of listing here, one of his signature achievements was the creation of two exceptionally fine British television series: Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, both of which were featured on the PBS show, Masterpiece Mysteries.
Horowitz is a master of British detective fiction. His sleuths roam backroads and picturesque country villages gathering clues and sorting through suspects as they calmly and methodically reveal the machinations of of the crime and the criminal to the viewer - or reader.
Anthony Horowitz has begun writing novels, and if his most recent foray into that medium, Magpie Murders, is any indicator, he is destined to have as much success with books as he has had with television programs.
Magpie Murders is a very clever and complicated piece of writing that is, in essence, a book within a book. The main character, Susan Ryeland, is an editor with a publishing house in London, a business concern that is primarily kept afloat by the success of one author, Alan Conway. Conway is the author of eight detective novels featuring an old detective named Atticus Pund who emigrated to England from Germany shortly after World War II. Pund bears several similarities to Agatha Christie's famed fictional Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.
As the story opens, Ryeland finds a copy of Conway's latest book, his ninth, on her desk and takes it home to read it over the weekend. The new novel its entitled Magpie Murders. After finishing the manuscript she discovers that it is incomplete - the ending chapter is missing. At about that same time she learns one other thing that will have a bearing on the success of the novel's sales - Alan Conway has committed suicide.
Susan sets off to find the missing chapter and to learn more about what drove her company's primary author to kill himself, and, as she attends the funeral and meets people involved in Conway's life, she begins. to suspect that he may have been murdered. There are many similarities between the life of Alan Conway and the characters who populate the book that he has just finished, and the clever editor must sift through all of the tangled story lines and clever puzzles to arrive at the truth.
Horowitz's novel, Magpie Murders, contains the entire text of the fictional novel by the fictional author, Alan Conway, as well as the details of the mystery being unravelled by Conway's editor, Susan Ryeland. It is two books forged together as one.
Horowitz also uses Ryeland's examination of Conway's work to highlight philosophical and intellectual details of writing in the mystery genre. He stresses multiple times that actual murders are quite rare and not very representative of real life - except perhaps in certain high-crime areas. He also examines the relationship between the detective and the reader, noting that they are bound together in the search for the truth of what has transpired. Another aspect of his own detective fiction that Horowitz clarifies is his use of the English village for a backdrop, a convenient setting because everyone knows each other and it becomes easier to develop complex motives that will encompass most of the community - and thus keep the detective and the reader struggling to come up with the "truth" until the final pages.
Magpie Murders is more than just a story - or two stories - of murder. It is an in-depth look at the work that goes into crafting mystery fiction - and who better to take us into the mind of a mystery writer than Anthony Horowitz!
It's a damn fine work!
Reader
Even though I have long regarded Anthony Horowitz as one of my favorite writers, it was not until recently that I actually read one of his works. Horowitz, you see, is known primarily for being a writer of television programming, and his work in that medium is in a class by itself - a very high class. While the television credits of Anthony Horowitz are too numerous to preclude any type of listing here, one of his signature achievements was the creation of two exceptionally fine British television series: Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, both of which were featured on the PBS show, Masterpiece Mysteries.
Horowitz is a master of British detective fiction. His sleuths roam backroads and picturesque country villages gathering clues and sorting through suspects as they calmly and methodically reveal the machinations of of the crime and the criminal to the viewer - or reader.
Anthony Horowitz has begun writing novels, and if his most recent foray into that medium, Magpie Murders, is any indicator, he is destined to have as much success with books as he has had with television programs.
Magpie Murders is a very clever and complicated piece of writing that is, in essence, a book within a book. The main character, Susan Ryeland, is an editor with a publishing house in London, a business concern that is primarily kept afloat by the success of one author, Alan Conway. Conway is the author of eight detective novels featuring an old detective named Atticus Pund who emigrated to England from Germany shortly after World War II. Pund bears several similarities to Agatha Christie's famed fictional Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.
As the story opens, Ryeland finds a copy of Conway's latest book, his ninth, on her desk and takes it home to read it over the weekend. The new novel its entitled Magpie Murders. After finishing the manuscript she discovers that it is incomplete - the ending chapter is missing. At about that same time she learns one other thing that will have a bearing on the success of the novel's sales - Alan Conway has committed suicide.
Susan sets off to find the missing chapter and to learn more about what drove her company's primary author to kill himself, and, as she attends the funeral and meets people involved in Conway's life, she begins. to suspect that he may have been murdered. There are many similarities between the life of Alan Conway and the characters who populate the book that he has just finished, and the clever editor must sift through all of the tangled story lines and clever puzzles to arrive at the truth.
Horowitz's novel, Magpie Murders, contains the entire text of the fictional novel by the fictional author, Alan Conway, as well as the details of the mystery being unravelled by Conway's editor, Susan Ryeland. It is two books forged together as one.
Horowitz also uses Ryeland's examination of Conway's work to highlight philosophical and intellectual details of writing in the mystery genre. He stresses multiple times that actual murders are quite rare and not very representative of real life - except perhaps in certain high-crime areas. He also examines the relationship between the detective and the reader, noting that they are bound together in the search for the truth of what has transpired. Another aspect of his own detective fiction that Horowitz clarifies is his use of the English village for a backdrop, a convenient setting because everyone knows each other and it becomes easier to develop complex motives that will encompass most of the community - and thus keep the detective and the reader struggling to come up with the "truth" until the final pages.
Magpie Murders is more than just a story - or two stories - of murder. It is an in-depth look at the work that goes into crafting mystery fiction - and who better to take us into the mind of a mystery writer than Anthony Horowitz!
It's a damn fine work!
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