Book #34 of 2021: Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Susan Ryeland #2) This is another fun postmodern detective story, but it’s a bit too similar to its predecessor Magpie Murders, in a way that rather strains credulity. (The same dead writer knew about a second killer who had escaped justice and placed subtle clues to …
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Book #184 of 2019: The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (Hawthorne #2) I’m still not sold on the metafictional conceit of this mystery series, which places its author as a Watson-type narrator to the investigations of a supposed Holmes-like acquaintance. This second novel continues that detective’s odious streak as well: it’s true that Anthony …
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Book #163 of 2018: The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (Hawthorne #1) A solid whodunnit mystery, but not quite as imaginative as author Anthony Horowitz’s earlier novel Magpie Murders (to which this story is unrelated, despite the similar title). The hook this time around is that Horowitz is writing as a fictionalized version of …
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Book #29 of 2018: Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz The entire first half of this novel is an extended Agatha Christie pastiche, wherein a Poirot-like detective investigates some suspicious deaths in a quiet English village. It’s very well done, and would be a fun pastoral whodunnit even on its own merits. But as it turns …
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