Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

 For our May Mystery Book Club, we read Moonflower Murders (Susan Reyland #2) by Anthony Horowitz. We had read book #1, Magpie Murders a few years ago.

About: "Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is living the good life. She is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend Andreas. It should be everything she's always wanted. But is it? She's exhausted with the responsibilities of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, and truth be told she's beginning to miss London.

And then the Trehernes come to stay. The strange and mysterious story they tell, about an unfortunate murder that took place on the same day and in the same hotel in which their daughter was married—a picturesque inn on the Suffolk coast named Branlow Hall—fascinates Susan and piques her editor’s instincts. 

One of her former writers, the late Alan Conway, author of the fictional Magpie Murders, knew the murder victim—an advertising executive named Frank Parris—and once visited Branlow Hall. Conway based the third book in his detective series, Atticus Pund Takes the Cake, on that very crime. 

The Trehernes' daughter, Cecily, read Conway’s mystery and believed the book proves that the man convicted of Parris’s murder—a Romanian immigrant who was the hotel’s handyman—is innocent. When the Trehernes reveal that Cecily is now missing, Susan knows that she must return to England and find out what really happened."

You may or may not know that this book and Magpie Murders, are really two books in one. Moonflower Murders follows the format of Magpie Murders.

The book starts out with Susan Ryeland living in Greece, running a hotel with her boyfriend. When she is hired and travels back to England to work on the mystery of a murder from years ago and the disappearance of a young wife and mother, Susan needs to read Moonflower Murders (Atticus Pund) by Alan Conway for clues.

I liked it a lot. It is very long, because it is two books in one. But I felt like it read quickly. It seems like almost everyone in the MBC liked the book. I asked which book did they like better: the main story or the book inside the book. Most including me, liked the book inside the book. It is written as traditional English mystery and Atticus Pund reminded me of Poirot. 

The more we talked about the book, the more we found we did get some of the characters confused: was so and so in the main book or the Moonflower Murders? 

In general everyone liked it but was somewhat confused with so many characters to keep track of in two books.

Magpie Murders has been made into a T.V. series and is showing on Brit Box.It is to come to PBS in the U.S. in 2022. One person in the group has seen the series and said is was very well done, that all though it goes back and forth from the main story to the book inside the book, it wasn't confusing.

I do recommend it. It is a good mystery.

Anthony Horowitz is the creator of Foyle's War and wrote some of the Poirot episodes and some Midsomer Murders episodes. He also was designated by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to write a new Sherlock book. The House of Silk was published in 2011. I think I need to look for that book now.