Magpie Murders
Ratings218
Average rating4
Prima tussendoortje. Een who-dunnit in een who-dunnit: een schrijver stuurt zijn recentste manuscript naar de uitgever, maar het laatste hoofdstuk lijkt te missen. Dan blijkt dat de schrijver vlak daarvoor is overleden onder enigszins verdachte omstandigheden...
Je krijgt eerst het manuscript te lezen, daarna wat er in de ‘echte' wereld gebeurde, met vervolgens ontknoping van zowel dat als van het manuscript.
Contains spoilers
Rating Description:
1.0 - DNF/Despise
1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had
2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring
2.5 - Alright with lots of notes
3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it
3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it
4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot
4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes
5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive
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This book was doing too much. It’s a story within a story that also included an excerpt of another story.
The main reason I didn’t DNF this book was because I really wanted to finish my Book Club’s pick so that I can have a meaningful discussion when we do meet up. If I had picked this up on my own, I would have abandoned it within the first 100 pages.
Basically, there are 2 main stories.
1. A mystery novel that had the last few chapters missing.
2. The search for the missing chapters that bloomed into trying to figure out what really happened to its author.
This book started with the mystery novel. It progressed as stories usually do.
Frankly I could hardly get myself to be invested in solving who killed the so-called victims in the mystery novel. Both seemed like awful people. To me, they had it coming.
Then as things in that story finally got me invested, it abruptly halted because the succeeding chapters were missing. The story of this book suddenly shifted to the current day story about the missing chapters and the author of the mystery novel.
The current day story was even more boring than the story in the mystery novel. There were so many long-winded red herrings thrown in there that trying to scrutinize them for clues, as to who killed the author and why, was basically pointless. They all, in the end, didn’t matter other than to hammer home the point that the author was a <b>BIG HONKING DOUCHE</b>.
Were the missing chapters of the mystery novel found? Yes. Honestly, it was an interesting end to that story.
However, the rest of the book? Ugh. Self-indulgent. I should have just skipped all the chapters related to the current day plot about the author of the book. As for it’s ending, it was not really that interesting. It was similar to the movie Gattaca.
<b>Side Note: </b>
<spoiler>This is the 3rd book from my Book Club where a house/building burned down.</spoiler>
This was an impressive riddle inside a riddle mystery. It wasn't as cozy as some that I've read recently, and I didn't find myself feeling warm and fuzzy about the characters, but I was definitely hooked into the narrative and the twisty turns. There is something about a smart whodunnit (and this is very clever) to draw me in and keep my mind occupied -- something that is good for my mental health. I do recommend for that.
I started reading this when I had finished my other beach book called “Murder in the Family.” While walking along the beach, the hotel had been kind enough to set up a table that people can place and swap books from those that had been left. I picked up “Magpie Murders” purely due to the cover, title, and the fact that it seemed to be another murder mystery.
I knew nothing about this book going into it and looking back at the last month, I am happy that I had not read reviews before snapping it up, plopping down into my beach chair and starting in.
I was thrown for a loop when the murder mystery, had its own Murder Mystery inside of it. Like a Murder Mystery Turducken. I very much enjoyed the book, and I was guessing all throughout on who the killer(s) were. I will most likely look into other books by Horowitz, but I also enjoy the idea what this book spontaneously came into my life through the hotel table on the beach.
A solid whodunnit story, with a slight twist at the puzzle within a puzzle. Both endings were done pretty well, and kind of final which leaves me quite satisfied.
“Magpie Murders” is a really fun mystery (within a mystery) with great characterization and lots of surprises. It only took me a few days to read and I'm into the next book in the series already!
Very fun! Sometimes I didn't love involving myself in one mystery only to get pulled out of the story, but the writing was great and the structure was intriguing.
I listened to this as an audiobook. Loved it! The story and narration were fantastic.
I thought that having the boyfriend randomly show up to drag her out of the burning building was lame. There was no logical reason for him to be there and to look for her in someone else's office, of all places. Very weak plot point in an overall strong and smart book.
Book inside book format was ok. I am willing to overlook the Agatha Christie mimicry, but the lack of likeable characters is my dealbreaker. Two stars because the Audible narrator has the most extraordinary voice.
Brilliant story within the story. I couldn't put it down. Also, some nice and funny insights on story telling.
One sentence synopsis... A mystery within a mystery, a book editor finds herself solving a murder with clues left in the manuscript of one of her author's detective novels.
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Read it if you like... Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, pre-forensic detective work. Or just if you enjoy creative narrative devices or getting two books for the price of one.
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Dream casting... the book already casts Ben Kingsley as the fictional detective from the manuscript Atticus Pund but in addition to that I'd cast Michael Emmerson as the unlikeable author Alan Conway.
Unlike Pünd I have never been very good at solving crosswords, puzzles etc. and I have to admit that I did laugh out loud when the main one in this book was revealed. You could say I'm Atticus Pünd
I'll be quite interested if the BBC version of his keeps that particular twist in there.
I was bored. Figured out killers early-ish, which isn't always bad but I realized at a certain point near the end that I didn't care if I was right.
I think it's the first time I've been so surprised by a whodunnit! I had no idea what was the book about when I first started reading it, I hadn't even read the blurb, and I was pleasantly surprised. If you like murder misteries but you have already read all the classics and think nothing can surprise you, this might be the book for you.
Recensie van audioboek (via Storytel)
Ik ben een grote fan van whodunits, maar zelden puzzel ik ook actief mee. Gewoonlijk laat ik het verhaal gewoon over me heen spoelen en heb ik maar vage vermoedens en ideeën. Magpie Murders bracht mijn innerlijke detective echter naar de voorgrond. Van het begin werd ik gegrepen door het verhaal van een boek in een boek en kriebelde tal van post-its vol met aanwijzingen, namen, gebeurtenissen en vermoedens.
“As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.”
En dit citaat vat perfect mijn detectivepogingen samen ;-)
Ook al is aan mij geen speurneus verloren gegaan, dit boek was genieten van het begin tot het einde. Een schitterende, slimme en sluwe ode aan het genre.
I adored this book and almost everything about it, it definitely reminded me of the Agatha Christie books I have read way back in the day and it was nice to remember those times. For starters, I loved that the book had a mystery within a mystery, I have not encountered that too many times before. The main character, Susan works for a publishing company and she is given a manuscript of the latest book written by the company's most famous writer and as she dives into the book, she realizes that there is a real world mystery that needs to be solved involving the author's death. It's a really fascinating plot and the execution was almost perfect in my opinion.
The reason I didn't give the book five stars was because I got so into the mystery in the manuscript of the novel, that I found it hard to abandon that initial storyline and switch over to the real life mystery, where Susan is the detective and the suspects are all different, as is the nature of the mystery itself. I was a bit frustrated because I had to know who the killer was in the novel and then I would have been a lot more calmer going into the mystery switch. The ending was definitely worth it in hindsight but at the time I was reading it, I found it difficult to go on at times because I wanted the solution to the first one.
The pace of the novel was pretty good, even with my frustration although there were a few instances when I wanted the story to move along a bit faster since I was dying to know the end of the manuscript that the book began with. Other than that I got no complaints. It was a genius story, I'm just a rather impatient person.
Moving on, the characters I grew very close to and fond of. I found a very relatable human aspect to almost all of them and grew to know them very well. Everything was explained in the end and I was grateful for being able to conclude everything with certainty and was not left to ponder much of anything. Most of the books I have read before have not given me this satisfaction and I loved every second of finding out why every individual acted the way that they did. Now I will not lose sleep over racking my brain as to who did it.
In addition, the style of the writing was simple yet refined. It helped the plot flow smoothly, yet there was an intelligence to it that is hard to pinpoint but is evident in the layout of the novel. There were no instances in which I found myself having to reread parts because something didn't make sense or I wasn't fully aware as to what was going on. I will definitely look into Horowitz's other works.
In conclusion, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good who-done-it but with a twist that you don't initially see coming. It will grab your attention and you won't be able to stop because you will be invested in the story and it's intricate characters and you will have an undying need to find out who the perpetrator is of both mysteries!
3.5...four stars for the book within a book, three for the present day story line.
Such fun! A book within a book ✅ a cosy mystery ✅ a quirky foreign detective ✅ a literary puzzle with lots of lit references ✅ whodunnit x 2 ✅ complete escapism ✅
I feel conflicted about this one. I am a huge fan of the Golden Age of detective fiction. This was marketed as an homage to it, so I immediately jumped at it, but on the whole it really wasn't. It was more of a critique.
While it raised some good questions about authorship (Can an author ever be truly separated from their work? If the public loves an author's work but they themselves despise it, is it good work? Etc.), I ended up not really liking it.
Here's why:
—There are two interconnected mysteries at play. The first, in the style of old fashioned crime writers, I really enjoyed. The second I found boring and cynical, plus it made fun of anyone who liked the first one.
—It is maybe too self-aware. The author (the real author) comes off as bitter and cynical about the book world, which I found unnecessarily stressful.
—I guessed the culprit in both mysteries. It wasn't very hard. Ordinarily that doesn't bother me much, but it did bother me that...
—The culprits both had weak motives. If you were going to decapitate someone with a sword, or even push someone off a building, you would have to have good motive.
—An author who basically shows off about how much they know about mysteries and the book world for 400 pages should know that. If you are going to come off as snide and all-knowing about a topic (like mystery novels or authorship), be prepared to be held under your own criticism.
Over all, it was like a mash-up of Agatha Christie and House of Blue Leaves, but it didn't pull off the House of Blue Leaves part. In talking about how authors can ruin their own work, it felt like the author did so himself.
I loved this book not just for delivering everything I wanted out of an old-fashioned whodunnit, but also for being a virtuoso performance by an author delivering a defense of the genre that's never defensive, didactic, or self-conscious.
What impresses me the most is that there are a hundred ways that this could've ended up insufferable or even just disposable. Descriptions of the “nesting doll” murder mystery-within-a-murder mystery made it sound like the literary equivalent of the “Scream” movies: self-aware meta-interpretations of a genre that work perfectly well, but don't end up “saying” much of anything apart from “we're all in on the joke.” But Horowitz includes an implicit defense of whodunnits while acknowledging the criticisms of them. He acknowledges that they're the literary equivalent of comfort food, then challenges anyone to explain why that's a bad thing.
Horowitz changes voice frequently throughout the book — not just for the two mysteries themselves, but for different characters throughout both stories, and for excerpts from other novels. There's never a sense that the inner mystery is “simple” or somehow less literary than the outer mystery, just that they have different voices. And what's more, he includes lengthy examples of BAD writing, a crutch often used by insecure writers to make their “real” writing seem more accomplished by comparison. Here, though, they're an implicit defense of readable, unpretentious writing and clear, confident storytelling.
I do wish that I were in a book club or something, because I can't shake the feeling that there are clues I still haven't identified, and threads that were left hanging. The downside to such a meticulously-constructed puzzle box is the sinking suspicion that there are always layers of the puzzle left unsolved.