Magpie Murders Pdf is a Crime Mystery Thriller novel By Anthony Horowitz. Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.
Magpie Murders Summary
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’s 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.
READ
- Slow Horses Pdf Summary Reviews By Mick Herron
- The Breakdown Pdf Summary Reviews By B.A Paris
- Friend Request Pdf Summary Reviews By Laura Marshall
About Anthony Horowitz Author of Magpie Murders Pdf Book
Anthony Horowitz Author of Magpie Murders Pdf is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as “The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century.” (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009.
On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled the House of Silk. You can connect with him @http://us.macmillan.com/author/anthon…
Magpie Murders pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Publisher : Harper; First Edition (June 6, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062645226
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062645227
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.49 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #39,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #636 in Historical Thrillers (Books)
- #691 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- #1,190 in Amateur Sleuths
- Customer Reviews: 4.2 out of 5 stars 12,037 ratings
Magpie Murders Book Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars An Exceptional Writer!
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2022
Verified Purchase
I love the characters, plot, and the play with words, anagrams, codes, etc. This is a very different type of whodunit! It has a surprising end. I could not guess the killer or ending. I could not lay the book down until I finished it. If you like Foyle’s War or Midsummer Mysteries, you will love this book. Highly recommend Anthony Horowitz and his creative writing to you.
5.0 out of 5 stars Why “murders” is plural!
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2022
Verified Purchase
Magpie Murders is actually a collection of tales describing more than one murder…or
maybe two! As the tale progresses, the reader finds herself dealing with more and more murders…tho’ not all are contemporaneous. And not all are “human”. The reader may need a chart to sort thru all the murders!
5.0 out of 5 stars Five glorious stars! I’d give it ten if I could.
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018
Verified Purchase
Definitely a top contender for my favourite read of this year – a book that’s truly something special, original and memorable. I predicted early on that it was going to be a 5-star read for me, even if there’s always that small niggling doubt you have that it’s going to veer off the rails and end on a disappointing note. Thankfully, this wasn’t that book, and both the mystery set in the present, as well as the actual plot of the Atticus Pũnd whodunit, were clever, interesting, and more than exceeded my expectations. And I didn’t guess either mystery – a major bonus!
As outlined in the book summary, this book contains a novel within a novel. You’d think this would be confusing, but don’t worry it’s not, and anyone (particularly those who’ve read a lot of mysteries), will be able to follow the plot/s no problem.
The first chapter introduces us to the protagonist, editor, Susan Ryeland, looking back on the day she eagerly sat down to read the first draft of the latest Alan Conway mystery novel, ‘Magpie Murders’. She goes on to explain that ‘Magpie Murders’ marks the ninth book in his Atticus Pũnd detective series, and that she is a long time fan of his work. She then rounds off the chapter by stating that ‘Magpie Murders’ ruined her life, and how she wishes she had never read it. She wraps up with an ominous message that we have been warned…
We then launch straight into the ‘Magpie Murders’ manuscript, and I found it really cool how it’s set out like an actual book. There’s a cover page (not illustrated of course since this is the first draft), an ‘About the Author’ section, a title list of Conway’s eight previous books, and even a ‘Praise for the Author’ blurb. It really tickled my fancy that author’s Robert Harris and Ian Rankin endorsed both Atticus Pũnd and Alan Conway – too cute! It even states that Atticus Pũnd is soon to be a major BBC1 Television series.
The plot begins on the day of a funeral. Mary Blakiston, housekeeper of Pye Hall (the most prominent house in town) has recently died, the apparent victim of an unfortunate household accident, a fall down the stairs. We quickly learn that Mary is not well liked in the village – that she is a busybody who relishes sticking her nose in everyone’s business and ferreting out their secrets. Naturally, as a result of this, she has a lot of enemies. Atticus Pũnd, when he is introduced, is pretty much a carbon copy of Poirot, he’s even foreign. But don’t be put off, there are reasons for this that will be explained. Funnily enough, this is the second novel I have read this month (The Death of Mrs. Westaway) that not only features Magpies, but uses the rhyme ‘One For Sorrow’ etc. I felt it was used more effectively here, but Ruth Ware still does a good job of it.
To further distinguish it from the present day storyline, Conway’s novel is set in 1955, and is written in the more formal style of an Agatha Christie novel, with multiple third person POV’s. Whereas the present text, is narrated by Susan Ryeland in the first person, and has a lighter, more modern feel. There are some hilarious moments when Susan, attempting to play detective, and decipher clues, comes up with some really half baked ideas. She’s no Atticus Pũnd that’s for sure!
I recommend this over all other books I’ve read this year. I would’ve been more than happy if it was just an Atticus Pũnd novel written by Horowitz, but to have a second mystery as well, and relating it to the first in all the ways that it did just blew me away. I’m so tempted to move straight on to ‘The Word is Murder’ but think I should save it, knowing I have it still to read…
4.0 out of 5 stars Two books in one weighty tome
Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is a well-written novel, engaging in many ways, but also strange. Horowitz plays with conventions in a way that’s sometimes clever, but sometimes comes off as artifice. It’s unfair to generalize about the book as a whole, though, because it is two distinct, very different novels packed into one edifice-size book. I liked Novel One better than Novel Two.
Novel One is a more or less traditional British mystery, well executed with marvelous depth of detail and interesting characters, supposedly by a writer named Alan Conway. It is being read in manuscript form by a nameless person. As a standalone, and with a conclusion, it would be a fine novel in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes … even including the pleasant but diffident Watson-like figure of James. Atticus Pünd is an estimable protagonist, a perfect analog of Holmes, deductive reasoning spinning but never exposed. However, the story is told by an omniscient narrator (who isn’t entirely omniscient, since he’s not privy to Pünd’s deductive logic.) Most of the time this isn’t a show-stopper, but it is jarring when the narrator goes into a character’s head right after refusing to go into Pünd’s thoughts. The story toddles along, the omniscient narrator giving it a very 19th Century feel. But wait, you say, Conan Doyle was one of the first noteworthy authors to use third person distant so he could let Watson tell the story without having to expose Holmes’ ratiocination until the very end. An omniscient narrator would know Pünd’s thinking, so the choice of that form comes off as artifice. The bigger problem is there is a crowd of named characters from the little town of Saxby-on-Avon. We love them all, and Horowitz is at his best when he’s describing them. Most are potential suspects by the end of the 90% of Novel One we get before a break …… to Novel Two, which starts with an attempt to solve the too-many-characters-to-remember problem in Novel One. The solution is to have the nameless editor, who we might or might not remember from chapter one, summarize many of the people in Novel One, reminding the relieved reader who all these folks are. But the summary comes off as artifice. (“Ohmigod, editor says there are too many characters. Well, I’ll fix that.”) After the summary, the editor finally lets us know she’s Susan Ryeland, and Book Two is off to the races … well, the trots … and Ryeland narrates the second story in first person. The transition from omniscient narrator to first person helps make a clear break from Novel One, but Ryeland is a less interesting narrator than Conway’s omniscient narrator, and first person somewhat circumscribes her ability to give the reader the opulent descriptions that made me turn the pages in Novel One. It turns out that there are many parallels between Conway, the author, and his protagonist, Atticus Pünd. That is well handled and interesting, but Ryeland’s search for missing material layers red herring upon red herring. Faced with many characters and many clues, I began to zone out. Still, the book is well-written. For readers who want complex plots and good writing, this book will be satisfying.
5.0 out of 5 stars The whodunnit to end all whodunnits?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2017
Verified Purchase
Joy Swift, inventor of murder mystery weekends, once wrote a plot in which you began to suspect that the actors playing the suspects were embroiled in their own murder mystery, quite separate from the one that they were acting out. So it is here. In what might be the ultimate whodunit, Anthony Horowitz, who himself was the first to adapt Midsomer Murders for television, alongside his many, many other achievements in the genre (bringing back Sherlock Holmes, writing some of the best Poirot episodes, creating Foyle’s War etc etc) has given us a detective story that is postmodern, metatextual and all those other words you weren’t expecting to hear when discussing the genre.
To tell you anything at all is probably giving away too much but I think it’s fair to say that it’s one mystery within another – the manuscript of a detective story that marks the final appearance of supersleuth Atticus Pund in a classic fifties plot is really just the beginning. The novel conceals another mystery completely.
The writing is perfect. Although this is the first anyone has heard of Atticus Pund, you don’t have to be too far in before your mind is kidding itself that you’ve read all the (non existent) previous adventures of a detective as prolific as Miss Marple or Father Brown. He is a very sympathetic sleuth and – in one of many marvellous in-jokes and references to Agatha Christie, Midsomer Murders etc – lives in Charterhouse Square, which is where they film Poirot’s ‘Whitehaven Mansions’ home in the TV series. As for his author and those who publish his novels… No, I’ve said too much already. If you love this sort of thing, you’ll be in Heaven from the moment you pick it up.
Get A Copy of Magpie Murders Pdf or Paperback By Anthony Horowitz
You can get A copy of Magpie Murders Pdf or Paperback By Anthony Horowitz from these online stores below.
