Be aware that this book is really best for diehard fans of the Christie or Sayers style of British mysteries. I thought the narration was good and added positively to the listening experience. Without them the writer needs to work to find a way to engage the reader with solid sparkling characters we can actually care about. Actors can really add to the back story in a screen play and help flesh out the characters and add depth to the story being told. After all, we don't have the likes of Michael Kitchen or Honeysuckle Weeks to encapsulate pages of writing into one very succinct glance, look or reaction filled with meaning.

However my biggest concern was that there wasn't enough internal detail, or character development to help me feel connected to the story being told. Much of this novel reads like a screen play with a great deal of external detail about the setting and the movements of this absolutely huge cast of characters. I enjoy Horowitz and his screen writing for TV with a particular favorite being the program Foyle's War. Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the listener becomes the detective. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she's convinced that there is another story hidden in the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.Ĭonway's latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house.

An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful. After working with the best-selling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery.

Magpie murders book 3