Mystery within a mystery

As gimmicky murder mysteries go, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is one of the best, which is why it created something of a sensation among mystery readers when it was published a couple of years ago. The gimmick is that it contains a mystery within a mystery, giving the reader two for the price of one, while at the same time producing a satisfying single story.

Susan Ryeland is an editor for a small British publishing company that is in the black only because of one author, Alan Conway, whose ninth Atticus Pund mystery will be the last because both Pund and Conway himself are dying.

This ninth book in a popular series involves the mysterious death of a housekeeper in a fall down some stairs and, days later, the vicious murder of her employer. Although Pund, an amateur detective with remarkable success, had previously decided that, because of his declining health he would accept no new cases, this murder case he finds impossible to ignore.

After reading a few pages about Susan, we are treated to virtually the entire Conway novel. But the ending of that novel is missing, she finds, and then Conway is found dead of an apparent suicide. Susan wonders if it might have been murder, and while searching for the missing chapters she herself plays amateur detective. Not until she finds her murderer (and the missing chapters) do we return to observe Pund catching his.

The two mysteries are interrelated in clever and creative ways, clues to one mystery being found in the other.