Marble Hall Murders, by Anthony Horowitz

 

9780063305700

Harper Collins, 2025

582 pp

hardcover

We've just returned from a very long vacation which gave me the opportunity to read this book,  the third novel in this series featuring Susan Ryeland and yes, for series followers, Atticus Pünd is back as well.   While I won't be giving top much away here, I will mention that before the book even begins, there is a caveat to the reader that "the solution to Magpie Murders is revealed in this book," so to anyone considering Marble Hall Murders who hasn't yet read Magpie Murders and may be considering doing so, you've been warned.  

For those readers who are familiar with the previous two novels (the aforementioned Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), Susan Ryeland has returned to the UK after her time in Crete, where she and her partner Andreas came to the end of their road, each realizing that they were "no longer in love." As she came to realize, "My head was in London while my heart was no longer in Crete,"  so it's back home she goes, working as a freelance associate editor for Causton Books (nice little nod to Midsomer Murders there).   Her boss hands her the first thirty-thousand words of a manuscript which is and a  continuation novel featuring Atticus Pünd, which "follows on from Magpie Murders."  The author is Eliot Crace,  the title, Pünd's Last Case. Susan has reservations about the project from the beginning, but she feels she has no choice due to financial considerations plus the fact that Causton Books "was the one place in town" that just might take her on full time in a badly-needed senior position. Crace came from a wealthy family; his grandmother, Miriam Crace, had been the author of a series of well-loved children's books that had been "turned into graphic novels, a cartoon series on ITV, a hugely popular musical ..., three feature films, a ride at Universal Studios," not to mention the merchandise and an upcoming Netflix five-season deal.   As with the other two books in the series, as Susan begins reading the manuscript, we too delve into Pünd's Last Case, which, as the dustjacket blurb reveals, is

"set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring."

 Susan picks up on a few things in the manuscript that lead her to believe that Eliot may have based Pünd's Last Case on his own family, and hearkening back to the dustjacket blurb, "once again, the real and the fictional worlds have become dangerously entangled."  As readers of the previous two books in this series know, that is precisely how those stories have played out, but the stakes become a bit higher now as the body count rises and Susan finds herself at the center of it all.  

It sounds like it should be a great story, right?, and most readers on Goodreads believe it is, garnering an average and staggering 4.38-star review score.  I'm very likely the outlier here, because I didn't find this book nearly as enjoyable as I did the other two that came before. The usual book-within-a-book was quite honestly, underwhelming.  Normally I care more for the Atticus Pünd stories than for what's happening in Susan's present, but that didn't happen here.  Worse, I figured out the who in the Pünd story long before the actual reveal because it was beyond obvious.  Like, HELLO!!!   My other major issue is that the author only decides it's time to bring out the major twist in the Susan Ryeland story way too close to the final part of the book,  giving a really rushed feel to the novel's ending. There are more niggly things, but this post is getting a bit long.   On the other hand, I have to admit that it entertained me for well over two days, so that can't be a bad thing.  When all is said and done,  it just wasn't as entertaining or satisfying as its two predecessors, so for me it was a bit of a letdown.  But as I said, people are raving about Marble Hall Murders so if you're following the series, you may likely want to read it. 

from PBS: Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan

One of the tags I used for this post is "page to screen," since according to PBS,  there will be a third (and final) installment in the Masterpiece series starring Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland and Tim McMullan as Atticus Pünd.  The previous two have been extremely bingeworthy, so even though I didn't care for the book as much as I might have, I will be ready to watch when the series rolls around again.