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

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

July 10, 2024

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang

June Hayward and Athena Liu have known each other for almost a decade, since they met as freshmen at Yale, but you wouldn't call them friends. Their lives have take dramatically different directions: Athena is an amazingly successful author with several bestsellers and a new one in the works, while June's single book was published by an independent press and barely sold a few thousand copies, and she struggles to pay the bills by ghostwriting college essays and tutoring lackluster students. When Athena dies in front of June, June makes a split second decision to steal Athena's latest manuscript and pass it off as her own work.

This book has gotten a ton of hype. A plot about plagiarism isn't new or original, and yes, the publishing world can be vicious, and writers can be jealous and sneaky. But there is more going on here than jealousy and intellectual theft, including racism, social media attacks, and the argument about who is entitles to tell a story, i.e., do you have to be of Asian descent to write about Asian history? I found most of the characters to be really unlikeable. The story reminded me a lot of Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne, which I really enjoyed and recommend to readers interested in writers and the publishing industry, rather than this one. Did not like the cover.