Magpie murders, by Anthony Horowitz

A clever, entertaining, but too-long novel within a novel.  The centerpiece of the book is an almost complete mystery novel by Allan Conway, the eighth in his best-selling series featuring detective Atticus Pünd.  This very Agatha Christie-like tale is set, of course, in a quiet, cozy village.  But, as always, things are not what they seem.  Like the best of Christie, the reader is left guessing which of the many characters “done it,” the vicar, the son of a deceased housekeeper, the possibly autistic groundskeeper, the daughter of the lord of the manor, who was passed over completely when her twin brother inherits, etc.?  But maybe we’ll never know as the last chapter is missing.  At which point the book returns to the frame tale of Conway’s editor, Susan Ryeland and her world.  When Conway himself is dies under somewhat mysterious circumstances – was it suicide or was he pushed – the fictional mystery becomes a part of real life and the reader has two cases to solve – what happened to and in the last chapter of Magpie murders, and what happened to its author. 496 pp.