Book review: Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was very excited when I saw this pop up on the Edelweiss+ site, and I requested a review copy right away. I had really enjoyed the previous book in the series (Magpie Murders) and was eager to revisit editor Susan Ryeland and the fictional detective within the series, Atticus Pund.

Once again, this book has a detective-novel-within-a-novel, Atticus Pund Takes the Case, but this time we stay with Susan for nearly half the book before we get the Atticus Pund novel. Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed the Atticus Pund novel–it’s obviously supposed to be an homage to Agatha Christie and other Golden Age mystery authors. The novel-within-a-novel is tightly plotted and zips along, with just enough red herrings to be satisfying. Unfortunately, the rest of the “real world” novel with Susan Ryeland and the murder that she is investigating is quite a bit baggier and saggier than the fictional novel.

I did like Moonflower Murders on the whole, but I felt the non-Atticus Pund parts could have been trimmed back considerably. The pacing was very slow for the Susan Ryeland bits–i.e. for the first half of the book–and by the time we get to the novel-within-a-novel, I was already feeling that it dragged. Then, the contrast between the previous couple hundred pages and the Atticus Pund section of the book only made the feeling more acute, because the Atticus Pund section rips along and is so perfectly paced in comparison.

So, consider the Atticus Pund bit a 4 star book, and the rest of it a 2 star book–hence the 3 stars!

Thanks to HarperCollins Publishers for the advance review copy via Edelweiss+, in exchange for an honest review. This review also appears on my blog and on the Edelweiss+ site.

You can read all my reviews on Goodreads.