Magpie Murders

My beautiful sister-in-law (who is something of a magpie herself) picked this up secondhand and I snaffled it (get well soon, Trae xxx). I am a huge fan of Anthony Horowitz's wartime detective series, Foyle's War, which wonderfully combines history, character and mystery. Magpie Murders is not on the same level, but it is a bit of fun -- which is something we all desperately need at the moment.

Magpie Murders gives you two murder mysteries for the price of one. The book opens with editor Susan Ryeland reading the latest manuscript in the popular Atticus Pund post-war detective series. This manuscript is the first mystery, featuring a classic cosy English village murder. But the last chapter, with the solution, is missing... and then the author, Alan Conway, turns up dead... Did he really kill himself, or was he murdered too? And if the latter, by whom and why? Susan is determined to find out.

I enjoyed this novel, which cleverly plays with many of the tropes of detective fiction by interweaving the 'fictional' and the 'real' mysteries, just as Conway did with his novels. Perfect for curling up with in quarantine.