Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz Narrator: Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense
Series: Susan Ryeland #3
Pages: 592
Length: 17 hours and 38 minutes
Published by HarperAudio, HarperCollins on May 13, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from Anthony Horowitz—another tribute to the golden age of Agatha Christie featuring detective Atticus Pund and editor Susan Ryland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.
Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.
Freelancing for Causton Books, she’s working on the manuscript of a novel, Pund’s Last Case, by a young author named Eliot Crace, a continuation of the popular Alan Conway series. Susan is surprised to learn that Eliot is the grandson of legendary children’s author Marian Crace, who died some fifteen years ago—murdered, Elliot insists, by poison.
As Susan begins to read the manuscript’s opening chapters, the skeptical editor is relieved to find that Pund’s Last Case is actually very good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, who, though mortally ill, is poisoned—perhaps by a member of her own family. But who did it? And why?
The deeper Susan reads, the more it becomes clear that the clues leading to the truth of Marian Crace’s death are hidden within this Atticus Pund mystery.
While Eliot’s accusation becomes more plausible, his behavior grows increasingly erratic.. Then he is suddenly killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Susan finds herself under police scrutiny as a suspect in his killing.
Three mysterious deaths. Multiple motives and possible murderers. If Susan doesn’t solve the mystery of Pund’s Last Case, she may well be the next victim.
My Review:
Someone really needs to do something about Alan Conway. Possibly an exorcism. Or at least a cleansing ritual involving a whole lot of sage. Because in spite of his death early in the first book in this series, Magpie Murders, Alan Conway’s malevolent spirit continues to haunt his former editor, Susan Ryeland. Quite possibly to death.
Even though Conway, the creator of the best-selling fictional detective Atticus Pünd, has been dead since the early pages of Magpie Murders, the story STILL manages to be all about him. Likewise, even though Conway is no longer writing the Atticus Pünd mysteries, there’s still a new book to wrap this story around.
Life often imitates art in this series, and that’s certainly true here, as Susan’s new publisher, Causton Books, has commissioned a continuation novel for the still-popular series. Which is where Susan, as the late Conway’s editor, reluctantly comes into the picture.
Or the frame, as the case turns out to be.
Susan is back in England, back in her old neighborhood, and back at work if not at her old publishing house, Cloverleaf Books. Considering the events that wrapped up Magpie Murders, that’s not really a surprise. The surprise, to Susan as much as to anyone else, is that she managed to get a job, even a freelance gig, with any publisher in England.
After all, Susan was responsible for getting the owner of Cloverleaf Books sent to prison for murdering Alan Conway – and for attempting to shut Susan up by burning down the firm’s offices with her inside them. There are, as it turns out, a lot of people who would rather blame her for catching her former boss than blame him for killing Conway in the first place.
Which probably says as much about her former boss Charles Clover’s likeability as it does Conway’s extreme lack of the same. And isn’t all that kind about her own.
Susan hates the very idea of being involved with Conway’s legacy yet again. And after the events of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders it’s difficult to blame her. But she needs the money. Even more, she needs the hope of getting a full-time job back in the industry that she loves and seems to live for – perhaps a bit too much.
Which is where Pünd’s Last Case and its commissioned author, Eliot Grace, come into the picture. And exit, stage left, pursued by Susan’s MG Roadster, straight into a hell at least partially of his own making – and putting Susan in the frame for his murder.
Escape Rating A+: This was the book that I just couldn’t resist reading. Or rather, listening to. So I started it in audio, couldn’t put it down and didn’t even want to try, and switched to text so I could find out whodunnit that much faster. Which is as much a pattern for my reading of this series as its “book within a book” story is a pattern for the series itself.
While I didn’t listen to a LOT of the book, I listened to enough to say that getting the actors who play Susan Ryeland and Atticus Pünd in the TV series (Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan respectively) to reprise their parts in this audiobook was absolutely brilliant.
Then, of course, there’s the story itself. Or rather, the stories themselves.
For the first two books, I was considerably more captivated by the ‘classic’ Atticus Pünd mystery on the inside than I was Susan Ryeland’s contemporary turn as an amateur detective that forms the frame for it. This time around, the balance was quite a bit more even, as it seemed like Susan was coming into her own as a character, where Pünd seemed to have sprung fully formed even from his opening scene in that first book.
Then again, Susan seemed to be flailing around personally and professionally as well as bumbling around as an amateur detective in those first two books, while this time around she’s moving forward with her own life and career in spite of some terrible roadblocks. Although she’s still a bit of a bumbler as a detective. Then again, that’s not supposed to be her job.
What makes this entry in the series work particularly well are the parallels between the series continuation novel written by Eliot Crace and Crace’s own life and all the people in it with whom he has scores to settle. Very much like Conway. Perhaps a little too much like Conway, as Eliot Crace also gets killed before he has a chance to finish his revenge stroke of a novel.
While Conway was as well known for the puzzles he inserted into his stories as he was for the sheer malevolence with which he skewered everyone he ever met by caricaturing them within his novels, Eliot Crace manages to have more nightmare fuel MUCH closer to hand than Conway ever did, while his veneer over the real-life identities of his characters is even thinner.
Once Susan has both read his manuscript and met his family it’s not a surprise that Eliot took to Conway’s wicked pen so readily – only that he was so very good at it. Nor is it much of a surprise that someone murdered him – just that it hadn’t happened sooner.
It’s also a LOT of fun to read the two books interleaved as they are with Susan’s deep dive into Eliot’s life and to play the game of ‘find the puzzle’ and ‘spot the reference’. Susan’s part of the story opens with two. First, she works for “Causton Books”. Causton is the county town where Midsomer Murders is set, so Barnaby and his Detective Sergeant of the season are from the ‘Causton C.I.D.’ which they refer to frequently and often. As if that weren’t enough of an in-joke, the author of Marble Hall Murders was one of the creators of that TV series. He has also been involved with not just one but two continuation series, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes – a practice that Susan seems to have a bit of a jaundiced opinion of. And that’s only the beginning.
Also the beginning of trying to figure out whodunnit in both stories before the big reveal at the end. I did get to the identity of Susan’s enemy well before she did – but not to the identity of either Eliot Crace’s true murderer OR the identity of the killer in his first – and last – Pünd continuation, whether or not it turns out to be Pünd’s Last Case after all.
That the frame around Susan was so very nearly successful, does seem to be par for Susan’s course. She was right that she should have steered far away from anything to do with Alan Conway. But I’m glad that she didn’t.
While this could be Susan’s happy ending, I hope it isn’t. This entry in the series was the best and most riveting of the lot, and I’d love to see more of both Susan Ryeland AND Atticus Pünd.
She’ll just have to find someone else to write more continuation novels. Or perhaps she already has!
