Review: Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Synopsis: Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer. His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. It's proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

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Two stories intertwined - the story contained in the manuscript for the latest Atticus Pund novel, and the narrative centered around the "real life" narrative of Susan Ryeland and her quest to solve both the mystery of the missing chapter and the death of the manuscript's author, Alan Conway.

As both compelling narratives reach their conclusions, so too do both storylines begin to merge, with the clues left by Alan and Susan's own investigation, providing the reader with all they need to solve the mystery; or will the reader follow the red herrings and fall into the little traps set by both authors?.

Horowitz has a knack for skillfully (and subtly) inserting the reader into the narrative. The more you read, the greater you - the reader - feel invested in happenings and characters, becoming so fully immersed to the point where all else is oblivious. A cracking read!