Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

July 21, 2025

Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

After breaking up with her partner Andreas, editor Susan Ryeland returns to London to take up her career as a freelance editor. She is hired by a small publisher, and to her dismay, she is asked to edit the newest Atticus Pund mystery, a continuation of the late author's mystery series by a younger somewhat unstable writer. Susan hates the series but she needs the job, so she agrees to work with the author, hoping she isn't going to be putting her life in danger. Again.

The third and possibly the last book in this series. This one was long, over 500 pages, and some of the descriptions could have been eliminated or shortened. I clocked Elaine a lot sooner than Susan did. Or maybe I'm just suspicious by nature. It will help if you've read the two previous books before taking up this one, since there are references to characters and the solution to the mystery in the first book.

Crouch End, London, where a lot of the action in the novel takes place

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

March 4, 2021

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Retired book editor Susan Ryeland is living on a Greek island with her boyfriend, helping him run a boutique hotel. She is not getting much job satisfaction out of her duties and is exhausted. When a wealthy couple comes to stay at the hotel, they tell her about a murder that occurred at the hotel where their daughter's wedding was held. The circumstances of the murder are eerily similar to the plot of a book by Alan Conway, the author of the Atticus Pund series and the subject of a previous mystery that Susan solved (in The Magpie Murders). They implore her to come back to England and investigate the crime.

It's a novel within a novel, a literary thriller. This is the second book in the Susan Ryeland series, and I loved the first book. Although the plot isn't as good as the first book, I was glad to read another Atticus Pund mystery - I hope there will be more.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

If The Stand got together with 2001:  A Space Odyssey and had a night of wild sex, Wanderers would be their love child.

Shortly after a comet passes near the earth, certain Americans begin to exhibit signs of a sleepwalking sickness.  Their family and friends are unable to awaken them (when they try, there are disastrous consequences), and the walkers gradually form a group walking west, with the numbers increasing by ten or twelve people every day.  Where are they going?  How can they exist without water, food, or sleep?  More importantly, is it contagious?  Aided by an artificially intelligent computer called Black Swan, a team of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control race to find answers while trying to combat political agendas, the media, and the conservative right wing.

I got bored around page 300 and started skimming.  Too many unnecessary characters and side plots, too much repetition (white people are bad, religion is bad, conservatives are bad, Republicans are bad, etc.), too many stereotypical characters (e.g., the Homeland Security guy is one step removed from a gorilla, the evil rural redneck who rapes another man, etc.).  The storyline did get more interesting once we got inside the walkers heads. 

(Personal rant:  This is something that I complain about a lot – don’t publishing houses employ editors anymore, and if they do, what are the editors doing?  Editors used to identify the parts of the manuscript that needed to be re-written or cut out.  If you don’t believe me, read Furious Hours by Casey Cep – in the section about Harper Lee, there is a part about how the editors at Lippincott sat down with Lee repeatedly and told her what had to be changed, until Lee did it, and created an American classic.  Wanderers does not need 800 pages to tell its story – a good editor could have cut out about 200 pages without damaging the narrative and made it a much better book.)