This cleverly written book follows on from the author's "Magpie Murders" novel, but in some ways it is a prequel as it deals with events eight years previously.
Susan Ryeland was a Publishers editor until the company she worked for ceased to trade. This was startlingly revealed in the previous book.
Susan is now living and working in Crete, running a hotel with her partner Andreas, who is a native of the island. A british couple Lawrence and Pauline Treherne approach Susan asking her to investigate the disappearance of one of their daughters Cecily. They offer to pay her a significant amount of money. As the hotel is struggling Susan agrees much to Andreas's misgivings.
The Treherne's own the Branlow Hall Hotel in Suffolk and it is now run by Cecily, her husband Aiden and their other daughter. The answer to Cecily's disappearance is believed to lie in a book Susan edited by Alan Conway "Atticus Pund takes the case". Conway is now dead but visited Branlow Hall and was interested in the murder eight years previously of Frank Parris an Australian businessman. One of the Hall's staff a Romanian Stefan Codrescu was jailed for life for the murder. Conway when he wrote the Atticus Pund book set it in Devon, but it unmistakenly contains characters based on the people running the Branlow Hall Hotel.
Susan travels to England. Before she re-reads the book, she interviews the Hotels management and staff. She is also considering her life with Andreas. Does she still enjoy it? Can she solve the puzzle and find out what happened to Cecily?
Well plotted and written. As with "Magpie Murders" there is an Atticus Pund book placed into the main book. Pund is a Greek/German very similar to Christie's Poirot ( except he was from Belgium!) Very highly recommended. An intelligent book which keeps you guessing. I look forward to more from this brilliant author.

If you love the Agatha Christie's style of murder mysteries then you will love this book. Cleverly written as 'a book within a book' with a great eye for details. All the clues are there for you to see you just have to find them!
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for the arc of this book.

Susan is living in Crete with he partner but they have debt problems and she is restless. She is approached by a couple who ask her to come back to England to look into the disappearance of their daughter, She has recently reread one of Conway’s books and told people she now knows who killed a guest at their hotel eight years before, The first half of the book follows Susan’s investigation into the original murder and her wondering what Easter egg Conway left in his book. Then you get to read the story her wrote and wonder yourself. The actual denouement is great fun and in a Poirot style, I didn’t guess the twist and turns, This book is highly recommended.

I never called any of the book I reviewed a masterpiece but there's always a first time. This book is a masterpiece, an unputdownable brilliant story that mixes different styles of writing and keeps you hooked till the end.
It's a book that talks about books and contains another book, a sort of delightful matrioska with a lot of references to Golden Age mysteries and cinema.
I loved everything. from the style of writing to the well thought characters, from the well plotted story to the excellent storytelling.
An excellent and gripping read that I strongly recommend.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The sequel to Magpie Murders picks up two years after the events of the last book and sees Susan Ryeland returning from living in Crete to the UK to solve another Alan Conway-related mystery. I wasn't as blown away by Magpie Murders as some were but definitely felt that way about Moonflower Murders. The story was sharp, fast paced, and played homage to many classic whodunnit novels. I found myself unable to put it down and, although there are still a few months to go, this has been the best book I've read all year. A fantastic read and a great follow-up in the series.

3,5 Stars

This is another cleverly crafted classic whodunit mystery thriller from Anthony Horowitz. It is a homage to old-fashioned crime novels like the ones from Agatha Christie. The plot is twisted and, as always with Horowitz, brilliantly written.

This is the second book featuring book editor Susan Ryeland after “Magpie Murders”. But she is not an editor anymore after what happened in the last book. She lives in Crete now with her partner Andreas and is running a small hotel. But the work never stops at a hotel and the bills keep coming in. Susan and Andreas don’t have much time for each other and are drifting apart. Susan begins to think that this all was a mistake and she misses working with books and she even misses London. Then suddenly the answer to all her problems comes to her when a wealthy couple shows up in their hotel offering Susan a job. Their daughter disappeared after finding a hint to a murder that happened at their own hotel in England. The hint was in a book written by Alan Conway who was the only author of the small publishing house Susan worked for. Susan edited all of Conway’s books and she knows them in and out. She is asked to help them find the hint in the book because nobody else seems to see it.

That’s the start of a cleverly plotted story. It is again a book within a book. First, we follow Susan back to England. After making herself accustomed with the people there she rereads Conway’s book. And we read it, too. Unfortunately, like in “Magpie Murders” I was not so happy with the Atticus Pünd novel. It started very slow. I am not a fan of cozy and old-fashioned mystery novels. I am also not a big fan of book within a book stories. In this case I also had to concentrate to not mix up both stories and to keep in mind who was who in which story. It is all very complex. Anthony Horowitz is a terrific writer and I am a big fan. The only problem here is for me that it is really a slow book. At first, when we are with Susan, it all takes a lot of time until she gets herself familiar with what happened. Then we have to get through the slow and cozy “Atticus Pünd takes the case” book. I must admit towards the end both stories get a bit more fast-paced. But it took me a while to get fully engaged into both stories. I am a bit torn because I appreciate the story and the writing but I was also a bit bored sometimes. I am also a bit disappointed how gay people are described. Two gay characters are horrible people, close to be described as perverts, and the others are sex workers. This bugs me a bit.

Horowitz is still one of my favourite authors and I enjoyed this book enough to recommend it. Especially if you are not so much into bloody and drastic thrillers but more into cozy and clever mysteries.

My very first venture in to Mr Horowitz's world and what a treat for murder mystery readers.! Not only that the two main settings are Crete and Suffolk (2 of my favourite places).

Mr H. obviously love writing and we meet Susan Ryeland, the main character who is also a retired publisher. There are many literary references to the world of fiction, not always complimentary.

Anyway, Susan 'volunteers' to leave her small hotel on Crete to help an English couple solve a mystery of their daughter's disappearance. She bases herself in the very hotel where all the "action" takes place and there are clues, mysterious goings on, anagrams - just perfect for the reader to solve the disappearance but also a murder or two!

I cannot praise the writer enough as he brings in a book within a book ( a novel idea - sorry!!). Susan edited a book entitled "Atticus Pund Takes The Case" and many clues are there for her and us. I will leave it there so as not to spoil the whole experience. There are classic 'Reveals', in true Agatha Christie style.

Thanks to Net Galley and Penguin Random House for the chance to read and review. Loved the 'plug' for Penguin at the end!!

Having loved ‘Magpie Murders,’ I was delighted to read, and review, the second Susan Ryeland mystery, ‘Moonflower Murders.’ This novel opens with Susan living in Crete, with Andreas, and helping him run the family run hotel, The Polydorus. However, despite the sunshine, this is not the idyll is first appears. The hotel is exhausting, she misses publishing and feels that her relationship with Andreas is suffering. So, when a couple appear out of the blue to ask her to investigate their daughter’s disappearance, she is intrigued.

Like Susan, Lawrence and Pauline Trehearne run a hotel; Branlow Hall. Some years ago, when their daughter, Cecily got married, a man was brutally hammered to death in one of the rooms. Now, the couple believe this murder is somehow linked to Cecily’s disappearance. Of course, we also have a link to Alan Conway, who visited the hotel and wrote one of his Atticus Pund mysteries, “Atticus Pund Takes the Case,” in which he borrowed his cast of characters liberally from those at Branlow Hall and, having read it, Cecily believed she knew who killed Frank Parris, on her wedding day. Has this discovery put her into danger?

Without thinking too deeply, Susan skips back to England and looks into the events surrounding both Cecily’s disappearance and the murder in 2008 of Frank Parris. This uncovers more of Alan Conway’s history, along with containing the full Atticus Pund mystery within the text.

I found this novel an absolute delight. I think that, somehow, Anthony Horowitz has sneaked in and become one of my favourite crime authors. I love the Daniel Hawthorne series, but it is nice – I will admit – to have a main character called Susan for a change! I loved every page of this and look forward to more of Susan Ryeland, the handsome Andreas, with perfect timing, and, of course, Atticus Pund. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

3.5

Overall this is an enjoyable murder mystery. I did not read the first book in the series but that didn't hinder the pleasure of reading. So, the book-within-the book aspect was rather new to me, and I did enjoy the style. It is extremely well written but I wasn't stunned by the revelations, I figured some of them out easily. This is a long winding, meandering book, if you like literary devices, you'll quite enjoy this. If you prefer straight forward mystery and have no time for anagrams or puzzles or unlikeable characters, you can skip it.

This is a book within a book and you need to pay attention. The second in the series of books with Susan Ryeland tasked to discover a murderer. In this case she was asked to help locate a missing woman who had gone missing after reading a book that she claimed uncovered the real murderer in a killing that took place in her family hotel. All clear so far? Then prepare to concentrate even harder as the book (edited by Susan Ryeland) is then reproduced in full within this book.

I really enjoyed this book and changed my mind so many times as to who the murderer was and no I still didn’t get it right. Written in the style of classic murder mysteries this is a book that will have you gripped.

The sequel to Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz returns us to both Susan Ryeland (was editor, now holiday island hotelier) and Atticus Pünd (detective and literary creation of unlikable previous victim, Alan Conway) for another book-within-a-book murder mystery homage to Dame Christie and the ‘golden-age’ of classic crime.

Yet again, one of Alan Conway’s books turns out to be related to a real-life murder and his long-suffering editor is dragged back to England – not entirely reluctantly – to try to help find a missing person using her knowledge of Conway’s twisty literary style and her personal talent for spotting inconsistencies – invaluable for both editor and amateur sleuth.

I became a little irritated with Susan initially, as she has been called in to the case specifically in order to bring her editorial insight to bear, yet seems to spend the first third of the story doing everything she can to avoid picking up the damn book! Eventually she does, however, and then we readers are treated to a reproduction of the entirety of Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, complete with fictional title page and copyright notices.

This is the aspect of these novels I really enjoy, and Horowitz has outdone himself this time round, as the story and characters in the meta-book are clearly linked to Susan’s investigations, but obscure enough to make the reader work hard for their clues. Not only did I have no idea who committed the fictional murder, but I struggled to match all of the suspects to their fictional counterparts, even whilst already knowing who some of them were meant to be. It’s not often I am stumped with a cosy mystery and it feels really good value for money too: two murder mystery books for the price of one!

As if all of this wasn’t clever or well-written enough, the final after-reveal, in which Susan returns to Alan’s novel again and unravels all of the additional puzzles, clues and ‘jokes’ hidden therein, is incredibly satisfying, whether you spotted them all or not.

I hope that poor Susan gets dragged in to more murder plots in future somehow – sorry, Susan! – because I love these books: as homages to classic detective fiction; as hidden puzzle adventures; as a book lover, getting to analyse and deep-read a text alongside a pro; and finally, as entertaining murder mysteries in their own right.





‘Can you tell me what happened on the night of the murder?’ I asked and even as I uttered the words I felt slightly ridiculous. They sounded so old-fashioned, so clichéd. If I’d seen them in a novel, I’d have edited them out.

– Anthony Horowitz, Moonflower Murders

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

A book within a book and a story within a story combined to weave a tale that kept me hooked from the very first page. Two "private" investigators, one professional and the other almost accidental working in their respective books to solve their case; yes, ultimately, just the one case. A fascinating concept that it is hinted to pay homage to Agatha Christie, for me, this was. in all respects, just so much better. Give yourself a real treat, you will not be disappointed.

I absolutely loved Moonflower Murders - it's such a clever concept, having a book within a book, and I loved the Agatha Christie style story with all the intertwining, outrageous characters which kept me guessing until the end.

The ending was slightly ridiculous, but that's what's go great about these kind of stories. They're just a lot of escapist fun.

I really enjoyed this book and you get two mysteries for the price of one, an added bonus I was not expecting. Both plots were well throughout and kept me guessing. All the characters are believable and although there are a lot of them, they were easy to keep track of. It’s difficult to write this review as I feel I have just read two books in quick succession and although they are both murder mysteries, they have a completely different feel to them. I definitely recommend this book and will be looking out for other Anthony Horowitz books to read.

I just love the whole concept of this series and hope there's more to come. This was a really well crafted sequel, carrying over all the good things about the first one but breathing new life into the format. My only quibble is that the Atticus Pund books (the books-within-the-books) never quite seem to live up their in-universe hype, plus they're always about 100 pages long. Nevertheless, this is easy enough to overlook when the plot around it is so compelling.

4.5 stars.

Anthony Horowitz does this so well - the book within a book thing. Susan Ryeland (from Magpie Murders) is back. Two years after her star author, Alan Conway, died along with her editing career, she and Andreas are living in Crete and running a small hotel. An English couple approach her for help. Lawrence and Pauline Treherne run a boutique hotel in Sussex, Branlow Hall. Their daughter, Cecily, who works at the hotel has recently disappeared. What has this got to do with Susan? Well, Cecily had just read Conway's third book - Atticus Pünd Takes The Case. Aspects of the story are loosely based on the real life murder of Frank Parris who was brutally bashed to death with a hammer at Branlow Hall eight years ago. One of the staff, a young Romanian man called Stefan Codrescu was charged with the murder and has been in jail ever since.

Cecily had always doubted his guilt. When she read the book she saw something that convinced her that Stefan was innocent and that pointed to the real murderer. She rang her parents and told them this without naming names. That afternoon she disappeared never to be seen again. Susan who, as Conway's editor knew of his foibles and writing style (he had a habit of including cryptic details within his writing) was considered well placed to find what was hidden in the book. The promise of a generous payment sweetened the deal as the Cretan hotel needed many repairs.

Susan heads of to England to investigate. And that is where I will leave it. This was a long complex book with many characters that took some concentration to read. It is, after all, two books in one. But it was well worth the effort. Horowitz's Susan Ryeland books pay homage to Agatha Christie and fans of the grand dame of whodunits should really enjoy this. The pace is not that fast but the story presents an intriguing mystery that you cannot help but try to solve as you read along. Sadly I didn't crack it. Will you take the challenge? For me it was a very enjoyable journey into something different to my usual genre. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and Anthony Horowitz for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
I give this 4 stars
Susan Ryeland is a retired publisher,an English couple ask her to research a mysterious murder on the same day,in the same hotel in which their daughter Cecily was married.Cecily has now gone missing a few hours after reading Atticus Pund Takes The Case, a crime novel Susan edited some years previously.
The clues to the murder and to Cecily’s disappearance must lie within the pages of this novel.
But to save Cecily, Susan must place her own life in mortal danger…
You start off reading a clever British crime thriller but then suddenly you're also reading the novel that the whole story is based around to! A mystery within a mystery,clues within clues.This worked really well and l loved the concept.Plot twists a plenty, well paced,and kept me guessing,finished off with the classic big reveal at the end.Superb murder mystery.
Highly recommended
Thanks to Netgalley, the Author and the Publisher for my chance to read and review this book

This is an ingenious book. Mr Horowitz is certainly a glutton for punishment, writing two murder mysteries, with plenty of red herrings and twists, in one book.

It starts with former book editor Susan Ryeland wondering if throwing it all up to run a seedy Cretan hotel with her sort-of fiancee is really what she wants. Even if it is compensated by a fabulous view. Then the past interferes. Her bête-noir author, now deceased, has stirred up trouble at a smart Suffolk hotel. Can Susan unravel the riddle that the missing Cecily meant when she read the book and says she knows 'who dunnit' after another man confessed?

After meeting all the cast of the Suffolk hotel, all of whom appear to be cliches or cardboard cut-outs (including Susan herself), we are treated to the whole book the fictional author wrote. The one that contains the truth about the murder that took place at thje Moonflower Hotel. Well, no, not the Moonflower hotel, the Suffolk hotel has a Moonflower Suite; it's the Moonflower Hotel in the book-within-the book.  Apparantely the fictional author enjoys puzzles and jokes within his books. The characters are based on the real hotel staff; various other clues are liberally spread about, pointing to who the author thinks did the murder at the Suffolk hotel.

I did what I often do when I'm reading a book I'm finding boring or tedious... I skipped through the advance reviews.  It is obvious that Mr Horowitz has a large fanbase that thrive on such artifices as name anagrams and the like. Some were slightly less enthusiastic, including one that said they struggled through the first third but then it got better.

I struggled through the first two-thirds before I really started to enjoy it. By then the book had finished, with a clever denouement, but I was continually irritated by the derivative approach. You know something's wrong if you read a murder mystery and can't read the sleuth as the German he's supposed to be. I've worked with and have German friends.  I kept sliding into a Belgian accent for him. Even Hare, the DCI, sounded just like Jupp. And the secretary Miss Cain, would have done quite well as Miss Lemon. The umlaut on Atticus Pünd's name irritated me every single time I read it. I have no idea how Mr Horowitz expects us to say it. Did he just not want the average US reader to rhyme it with fund?

So, after Ms Ryeland was back and doing her own investigation, she kindly made a table for us listing the characters in the Pünd book with the characters in the Suffolk hotel. It was deathly boring. Maybe some readers like it. It just felt so heavy-handed. 'Here we are, dear reader, I know I've made this very difficult for you, so I'm making it easier with a summary you can refer back to.' Patronising, that's the word I'm looking for.

But strangely, after that nadir, it turned around, and became a very good story. Several red herrings were exposed and deposed, earlier hints explained in full, and at last everything came together.

I can't genuinely say I recommend this. The characters are nowhere near as rounded as those of many cosy mystery authorss. But Mr Horowitz has done an entertaining job with plenty of complications for those who like their cryptic crosswords in book format. Somehow, from his reputation, I expected it to be better.

I really enjoyed this cleverly-plotted book with all its twists and red herrings although it took me a while to read because, with the book-within-a-book, there were so many characters to remember. I was attracted by the gorgeous cover and loved both stories, the writing style and the settings. The characters were intriguing and believable, and Susan, the publisher was a great choice of amateur detective

Having been a fan of Anthony Horowitz's work since I was a kid, I was intrigued to see what this book would be like. I hadn't read the previous book so was going into it blindly, not knowing a jot about any of the characters however this didn't dull the enjoyment.

I enjoyed the storyline immensely and really struggled with who the culprit could be and I enjoyed the 'book within a book' although I felt at times it was a little laboured and went on a little too long. I couldn't help drawing comparisons between the fictional detective Atticus Pund in the book within a book and another fictional detective in Hercule Poirot although it was explained that Conway, the author of the Atticus Pund novel, was a Christie fan.

I did enjoy this read although not as much as the author's other work as at times the storyline just dragged on a little too long where it would have benefited by being a bit shorter.