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A review by bluemiriam
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
2.0
I found all of the characters in the main story to be flat and unlikeable. Susan was highly judgemental and did not have the cleverness to carry the story as a detective, plus she seemed to not actually care about the mystery much. Horowitz wrote some thoughts for her that basically served as telling us answers without any evidence The story put its gay characters into the worst possible light, conflating their homosexuality with manipulative and cruel character traits.
The idea of a book within a book was interesting, but it pushed the story as a whole into an incredibly long slog. The secondary book essentially stole Agatha Christie's detective Poirot for the main character of Atticus Pund, and told a perfectly fine detective story in her style. It was not special enough to save the book from the awful outer story with Susan Ryeland. Overall, a weak story with a disappointing ending and several highly problematic tropes.
Spoiler
For example, she simply decided in an inner monologue that Cecily was dead, without including any reasoning at all, and happened to be right. In fact, the whole resolution was based on Susan telling a story with no evidence and only a thin assumption based on astrology.The idea of a book within a book was interesting, but it pushed the story as a whole into an incredibly long slog. The secondary book essentially stole Agatha Christie's detective Poirot for the main character of Atticus Pund, and told a perfectly fine detective story in her style. It was not special enough to save the book from the awful outer story with Susan Ryeland. Overall, a weak story with a disappointing ending and several highly problematic tropes.