Magpie Murders

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This detective story inside a detective story was interesting because it gave you two chances to figure out who the culprit was. One story is a cozy mystery set in the 1950's and I enjoyed the set-up with the chapter headings as part of the Magpie Rhyme...The second one was set in today's time with the death of the author and the editor trying to figure out who did it. Susan, the editor, is a bit unlikeable and no body seemed to like the author so that mystery was less fun. The book was a bit of a showcase of how an author could take real people and real events and twist them until they became part of a new story. The author seemed to dislike the genre he became famous for and skewered the tropes and stereo-types of the mystery genre which made you wonder if that was what Horowitz was doing and almost poking fun at the people who read them, so I didn't like that. The PBS adaptation was actually well-done, and ran the two mysteries side by side instead of consecutively and it worked better. I didn't like the character of Susan in either itineration but I would still see the show over the book in this case.

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