There’s something a bit… decadent about these books. They’re about an editor who edits mystery books, so we get an entire other mystery inserted into the book, and then she’s also (of course) involved with a mystery of her own that ties into (and has clues from) the “inner” book. It’s for people who have read so many mysteries that they’re blaze and want to read several mysteries at the same time. Or as the kids say: Dawg, I heard you like mysteries, so I put a mystery in your mystery so that you can read a mystery while you’re reading another mystery. (What is that you say? That thing is 21 years old? NEVER MIND)
It’s well written, and it’s fun, but it’s not as good as the first one. For one, the mystery in the book-within-the-book only had one possible solution, and it was really obvious from the start. Which made it really annoying to read the editor trying to puzzle out what the solution could be, because it just made her seem kinda stupid. And speaking of which — this also didn’t really have much of a motivation for her to get involved in her own mystery this time around. It’s like she was just kinda bored, so why not start interrogating people? It didn’t really hang together…
But it’s pretty entertaining. Since it’s two mystery novels in one, it manages to defend its almost six hundred pages, but only barely.
Horowitz seems to indicate that this will be the final book of the series, and he only wrote it because the actor who plays the editor in the TV adaptation said that she really wanted to have a third season. Which is a good motivation as any to write a mystery, I guess? But hearing that, I went “ah, that explains it” — it just feels ever so slightly strained and artificial.
But it’s fine. It’s plenty diverting.
Marble Hall Murders (2025) by Anthony Horowitz (buy new, buy used, 4.37 on Goodreads)