Anthony Horowitz… where have I heard that name before?

Oh yeah, I used to read a lot of Alex Rider.

It was a bit of a surprise to me when a few years ago, I started hearing Anthony Horowitz’s name in a non-Alex Rider context. And it was a bigger surprise a few weeks ago when I heard him on an episode of All About Agatha (the podcast about Agatha Christie) and found out that he has adapted Agatha Christie mysteries for TV. After finding that out, I obviously had to start reading his mysteries and I picked up the book I’d heard the most about: Magpie Murders.

And then comes the biggest surprise: I wanted to check something on Goodreads and I found that I had already read this book! And this was in 2018, so not that long ago! I do feel somewhat embarrassed but I already started my review of the book so let’s just press on.

Magpie Murders has two murder mysteries – the one that Alan Conway writes, and the one about Alan Conway’s death. As a reader, we’re plunged straight into Magpie Murders, the mystery that Alan Conway writes first, before being taken back to the real world where Conway’s editor, Susan Ryeland, tries to find the missing last chapters and figure out the real cause of Conway’s death.

In this reading, what I wondered about most was the structure of the novel. The book is split almost in two – we get the Conway story first, and then the real world story in the second half. I understand why this had to be done for the mystery, but it did make the fictional revelation about the murder a bit weaker because just so much happened between the time we read most of the manuscript and the last few chapters.

The character of Alan Conway also caught my eye. It’s clear that he’s an unlikeable person who thinks he’s above genre fiction (but can’t really write the literary opus he wanted to). I thought there might be a bit discussion on genre vs literary fiction, but it doesn’t appear that much in the book.

While I enjoyed this book a lot while reading, I think there’s something worth noting in the fact that I managed to completely forget that I’d read it and did not realise until after I finished the book and checked Goodreads. I’ve done this very occasionally with some Agatha Christie novels and other books, but looking at how effusive my first review was, I’m a bit shocked that it felt completely like a new read.

Still, I had two positive reading experiences with this, so I think it’s time to move on to his Sherlock novels (if I haven’t read them already).