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 a London publisher, she's given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pèund continuation novel called Pèund's Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children's author Miriam Crace, who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced she was murdered by poison. To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring.
Fans of the inventive English author Anthony Horowitz have reason to celebrate the arrival of Marble Hall Murders, the third entry in a terrific series started in 2016 ... Few other writers combine suspense and satire as smoothly as Mr. Horowitz, a writer who specializes in clever literary devices. As with its predecessors, Marble Hall Murders is told half in Susan’s first-person voice and half in the third-person voice of the manuscript under her purview. Thus we get two separate mysteries, twice the surprise—and double the payoff.
The third book in Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland series risks being ponderous, but despite its size, readers will find this mystery eminently readable ... Horowitz employs a dazzling technique of having a mystery novel within a mystery novel, and the fictional text Susan engages with is the key to solving her own case ... It takes a skilled hand to not only write a book-within-a-book, but do so cogently; Horowitz masterfully succeeds with smooth transitions between the two halves of his narrative, the tones of which complement each other ... Readers looking for a cozy that gives them something to really chew on will enjoy this lengthy mystery, and fans of Susan Ryeland will find this a satisfying installment in the series.
