Moonflower Murders
Moonflower Murders (Susan Ryeland #2)
By: Anthony Horowitz
[Fulfilled ‘Book with a flower in the title’ for Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
Horowitz maintains his ‘book within a book’ theme from Magpie Murders in this murder mystery written like an Agatha Christie, Golden Age detective novel. It makes the book over 600 pages which feels a little bit insane to read, but in reality somehow doesn’t take that long.
I like the Golden Age of detective thrillers and if you aren’t sure what that means, you can get all the details in Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone because he lays it out on the first few pages. Another series written in the same way is Charles Finch’s Charles Lennox series.
I had a hard time solving the Moonflower Murders case. And I think the double book situation is partly why. That and just the sheer complexity of a dual mystery plot.
You kinda need to know the gist of the book before that makes sense.
Here’s the sitch.
Moonflower Murders takes place years after Magpie Murders. Susan Ryeland, our main character, is living in Greece with her boyfriend, Andreas, running a hotel. She gets some visitors from England requesting her help in finding their adult daughter, Cecily, who has disappeared.
Why ask Susan?
Well these visitors also run a hotel. And a man was beaten to death in one of their rooms 8 years ago. They arrested the man who did it and he’s been in prison ever since. Shortly after the crime, Alan Conway (author of the Atticus Pund series), comes to the hotel and ends up writing a book inspired by the crime.
When Cecily reads this book (8 years later) she realizes that they arrested the wrong man. And she knows who really murdered Frank Parris almost a decade prior.
And then she goes missing.
Clearly Susan should be able to figure this out because she figured out Magpie Murders and she knows the twisted mind of Alan Conway, having been his editor for so long.
She’s itching to leave and takes on the job, going back to London to solve essentially two mysteries: who really murdered Frank Parris and what happened to Cecily.
The book within the book is the aforementioned Atticus Pund novel that solved the mystery for Cecily. It’s called ‘Atticus Pund Takes the Case’. The people surrounding the present-day murder are in this book but under different names. The crime in the book, however, is strangulation and the discovery of the murderer also feels very dissimilar. What could Cecily have noticed that made it so clear to her?
Well, the almost-detective that I am, I thought for sure I could put the clues together and nail this thing down. I actually did get a good chunk of it right by like page 60. And then I started reading the Pund book and decided I better just enjoy the ride. There were already a lot of characters, but then to try to keep straight who was who in the Pund novel and what that meant for the original crime felt like a lot to keep track of and I wasn’t about to get out a notebook and spend extra time on anagramming every little thing. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
[However, I did notice that the list of Atticus Pund books at the beginning of the ‘interior’ books if you just look at the first letter of each book spells ‘anagram’! I felt proud of my discovery except it really doesn’t do a whole lot to help solve the mystery…]
I had good suspicions about things that did lead to the truth, but there were quite a few things I missed. I think a lot of the clues are pretty subtle. There were also a lot of references to things or proper nouns that meant nothing to me. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, an English thing, or something else, but I did not get it.
I honestly don’t remember a whole lot from Magpie Murders since I read it 6 years ago, but this one had some other content in it that I don’t really remember from the first one. It’s not overt or descriptive but Frank Parris (this murder victim) and Alan Conway (previous murder victim) had some sexual escapades and kinky tastes that are interwoven into the mystery. Let’s just say that I learned what a ‘rent boy’ was.
Anyway, the book is still fairly clean, it just makes some of the characters unlikeable and reminds me (except not really because I don’t need to be reminded, I already am very aware) why ‘sex work’ is not a good or legitimate job for society as a whole or people personally.
There are some reviewers who have taken offense to the way Horowitz portrays gay characters in his novels and I can see how they might be. It’s not described very positively. I personally do not agree with the LGBTQ lifestyle and think it goes against God’s design for us, but if I were going to write a novel, I think I would just leave it out altogether rather than make it such a central part of so many characters and the mystery. It did seem a bit much to me as well.
There is a third book in this series set to come out in 2025. Although it’s a bit anti-climactic to read that book summary and find out that Susan has left Andreas and returned to England. The high at the end of this book must have been short lived for those two. Oh sorry, now you know Susan isn’t murdered, but you already know that right?
I also saw that they put this and Magpie Murders to the screen in limited series. I haven’t watched them yet but I think I’ll give them a shot. My husband won’t read a 600 page book, but I think he would like the mystery of it and a movie version is just the ticket!
And now, the part of the show where I talk about all the British words I learned while reading this book!
ha-ha: a sunken fence/wall thing that makes it look like one big lawn to the viewer but keeps the cows from comin’ up to the door (this is not a joke)
figeen: (this is not British-specific, but nonetheless a word I had not known) a silver brooch worn by a king; not a more speedily way of saying figurine
paddling pool: a kiddie pool that’s not big enough for paddles
camp: (i.e. “he was quite camp”) someone acting exaggerated, theatrical, or flamboyant and is often associated with homosexuals; also how did this happen? who gets to take a word, remove all the tents and hiking and change it to something completely different?
skanky hair: dirty and unkempt hair; I don’t think I’ll use this descriptor in America because people will think I’m a Mean Girl.
kitchen roll: paper towels; they don’t get confused when you ask for the kitchen roll because a bread roll is a bun so there’s not two rolls, Royce.
There was another one, but when I looked it up it said it was vulgar so I thought it best not to get myself in trouble here. I probably already have with camp, but what’s done is done.
It’s funny and interesting to me how two countries with the same language can have such different language!
Recommendation
If you liked Magpie Murders, you’ll like this one. If you didn’t like Magpie Murders, I don’t think this one will be much different for you.
If you’ve not read Magpie Murders but you enjoy detective novels like Agatha Christie, I think you’ll like it.
I wouldn’t write this one off just because of its length. I really almost didn’t read it when I got it at the library because I was like— that’s a big book. Can I commit to that thing? But truly, it reads faster than you’d think.
I’m planning to read the third book, but I think it will be good to have a break between this one and that one. Book-ception has to be sporadic for me!
[Content Advisory: some f- words; references to male prostitution and other sexual exploits; several homosexual relationships]
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