Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

4 reviews

erebus53's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

Full disclosure, I am not normally a fan of murder mystery, and I picked this one up as a book club read. I tend to like a bit of Midsomer Murders and have often quipped that most episodes of the show have an Autistic character somewhere in there, but this is the first time I have ever heard a little-Britain story that explicitly says that the weird loner is Autistic.

This story is meta as füc# .. the main character is an Editor who is reading the last work of a murder mystery writer. The author of the work she wishes to publish, dies with unfinished business but appears to have ended his own life.. or has he? Or is a murder mystery fan just taking off on flights of fancy and imagining herself a sleuth.

As a book reviewer.. this book is really strange to read. Every point that I recognise in story construction is explained by the main character as she tries to assess the work she is reading; it feels really weird to look at a story and think "ah it could be this person, but that wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion, and this person is an OBvious choice and so therefore will HAVE to be a red herring.. " only to then have those ideas explicitly expounded upon by the narrator of the story. How can your review a book that it reviewing itself?!

Events in the unpublished fiction, tend to echo events that are unfolding in the story of the Editor, and  it starts to get blurry in places and you wonder how much of what is going on is conspiracy, how much is causal, and how much is coincidental.

Amongst this stuff, conversations in the "real world" (of the book) feel like self-criticisms of the genre as a whole, and of the book itself. I can't help but feel THIS book is just trying to be clever, but it leaves me holding a handful of messy hints that the author of THIS book, feels like writing murder mysteries is a practice of making a product that sells well, rather than being good literature.

I did like the Disability narratives in the book. There is a person who is considered despicable for thinking of Down Syndrome as a disease, a person who has to deal with vision loss (and Audiobooks), and several characters with terminal illnesses.

It was kind of fun, but I was listening at 125% speed, which probably says a lot about the drawn out pace of the book and my desire to get it finished rather than actually enjoying the content. For that, I did have a couple of YUSS! moments where I had predicted things accurately or big reveals that felt fairly rewarding. Maybe if you like these sorts of books more you would get more out of it. It does feel quite like a Midsomer Murders story, with word puzzles in it.

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purplepenning's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

3.75


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amandas_bookshelf's review against another edition

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mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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rorikae's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz is a fascinating murder mystery that utilizes books and the murder mystery genre to explore two separate crimes. The frame story in Magpie Murders concerns Susan Ryeland, the editor at a publishing house who edits the novels of a famous murder mystery writer. We get the barest setup of her story before we are introduced to Magpie Murders by Alan Conway, the latest mystery book by the author that she edits. The first half of the book explores, in near its entirety, the fictitious novel Magpie Murders, reverting back to the frame narrative just before the reveal of what truly happens in the fictitious novel to explore a crime surrounding the book and its author. For the second half of the book, the reader is left trying to untangle two mysteries right alongside the main character as she tries to parcel out both the fictitious mystery in Magpie Murders along with the mystery that has sprung up in her own life.
By utilizing the frame narrative, Horowitz weaves an engaging mystery that kept me consistently on the edge of my seat. Though I think both mysteries are fascinating, I think the story within a story in the Magpie Murders by Alan Conway was my favorite of the two. It has a cozy, British mystery feel and because it takes up the first half of the book, I found myself more invested in these characters than I did in the characters from the frame narrative. Even so, I did find the mystery surrounding the book's author interesting as well though I found the solution and situation around it slightly less satisfying than the one in the book itself. 
I do have a few quibbles with this book. For one, there were a few points were it was clear that this was a male writer writing female characters, though a majority of these are in the fictitious Magpie Murders so I’m not sure if these are intentionally placed by Anthony Horowitz to give insight into Alan Conway’s character or if these were just slips on his part. My other issue is with the character of Susan Ryeland. She’s an interesting character for most of the book but towards the end, she makes some big mistakes that seem contrary to how she has been acting in the rest of the novel. Suddenly, she is too trusting and doesn’t think too much about certain situations, where she has been overthinking most of the situations previously. 
Despite this, I think this book was a ton of fun and a very gripping mystery. I highly, highly recommend the audiobook as it uses two different narrators (one for Susan’s story and another for Magpie Murders by Alan Conway) and both do a splendid job. I’m actually kind of sad that all of the books that Alan Conway wrote aren’t real though I am very much looking forward to the sequel to this series. I already have the audiobook on hold. If you like mysteries and are a big fan of books, I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy this novel. 

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