Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Moonflower Murders is the second book in the Magpie Murders trilogy by Anthony Horowitz. I have previously read Magpie Murders and the final book in the trilogy – Marble Hall Murders.

Two years on from the events of Magpie Murders, Susan Ryeland has left publishing and settled in Crete with her partner, Andreas, where they own a hotel.

Then she is contacted by concerned parents, whose adult daughter, Cecily, has gone missing. The family run a hotel which was the setting of a brutal murder eight years previously – on Cecily’s wedding day. A few weeks after the murder, famous author, Alan Conway, stayed at the hotel. He then wrote his detective novel, Atticus Pund Takes the Case, which had some similarities to the hotel and the murder.

Cecily was convinced she’d worked out who had committed the murder from the pages of the book and was frightened. Then she went missing…

With Alan Conway dead, her parents think Susan would be the best person to work out the connection between the murder, the book and their daughter’s disappearance.

They offer to pay £10,000, which Susan desperately needs for the hotel in Crete, so she agrees to look into the case. But she isn’t welcome at the family’s hotel and a lot of people have something to hide.

Moonflower Murders, like the other two books, is a clever and entertaining read. It is two books in one – we read all about Susan conducting her investigations, then we go back to the 1950s for Atticus Pund’s case – the murder of a film star in a classic sleepy English village. The action then switches back to Susan as she tries to use the evidence from the book to work out who committed murder eight years ago and what has happened to Cecily…

I absolutely loved Moonflower Murders and really can’t recommend it highly enough. Although if you’re daunted by long books, it’s probably one to avoid, as it comes in at nearly 600 pages!