Magpie Murders

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.