This is the third in a series of “a mystery book within a mystery book” by the prolific Anthony Horowitz. I had written about the first book in the series, Magpie Murders, in 2017 shortly after it was published. I love Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries, and Anthony Horowitz being a very good writer, I loved Magpie Murders. (Here is the link to my write-up: https://bookswehaveread.com/2017/09/02/magpie-murders/.) Needless to say, I was hardly alone in finding that book a terrific read. It was a tremendous success and went on to become an extremely well-made and critically acclaimed TV adaptation on the BBC (UK) and PBS (US) in 2022, which I also watched and thoroughly enjoyed.

I had concluded my write-up of Magpie Murders by saying that “I wish Anthony Horowitz would keep writing these books in addition to the other books he writes.” Well, my wish did come true as the series continued with a second book, Moonflower Murders, where the protagonist, Susan Ryeland, is once again called on to assist with a murder whose clues might be within a murder mystery book she had worked on in her job as a book editor. I enjoyed that book as well, as well as its excellent TV adaptation which was released last year.

In the new book, Marble Hall Murders, which was published last month, Susan Ryeland is back and again working on a new book as the editor, except that this time, the book is still in progress, and she is tasked with not just editing it, but also guiding and motivating the author to complete the manuscript. This “book within the book” features the same Poirot-like detective, Atticus Pünd, as the first two books in the series, and because this “inner” book is not yet complete, we experience the same frustration as Susan does in getting caught up in the mystery only to be left hanging. Also, the complication in the “outer” book — the one featuring Susan in the present — this time around is that the author, Eliot Crace, who has been commissioned to write the book is not only young and inexperienced, but he is also using it to reveal a murder that happened in his family a long time ago and to “out” the murderer, as it were.

Needless to say, it does not go well for Eliot. Susan too, gets caught up in the imbroglio, and so badly that not only does she become a suspect for murder herself but almost gets killed by the real murderer. She is only able to get out of the situation by solving the original murder in Eliot’s family that he was basing his fictional murder mystery on, and Susan does it in a very Poirot-like way, where all the suspects are assembled in a library and she does the “big reveal.”

Of course, the plot is extremely far-fetched and cannot be taken at all seriously, but it is extremely entertaining. And the book is so well written, it is a lot of fun to read. Most murder mysteries like the ones Agatha Christie wrote are escapist fiction, and it takes a special talent to write them so well that readers read and enjoy them with the full knowledge that they are reading them purely for entertainment rather than for any literary merit. As the British would say, they are “jolly good fun.”

Marble Hall Murders
Author: Anthony Horowitz
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: May 2025

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Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani is a fan of the written word.