Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz serves up a stylish contemporary golden-age murder mystery with whipped cream and a cherry on top with Marble Hall Murders. It’s a literary novel within a literary novel written with tremendous intelligence, humor, hidden clues, playful word games and anagrams that will keep readers actively engaged with literary allusions and murderous plot twists.
He is a master of metafiction; defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “Fiction that deals, often playfully and self-referentially, with the writing of fiction or its conventions.” His Hawthorne & Horowitz fiendishly cunning series featuring eccentric private investigator Daniel Hawthorne and the author himself as the somewhat bumbling sidekick is a perfectly delectable blend of a fictional character interacting with a real person within a novel.
The Final Chapter — Or Is It?
Marble Hall Murders is considered by the author to be a standalone as well as the concluding novel in a trilogy that began with Magpie Murders and continued with Moonflower Murders. Each was adapted by Anthony Horowitz into a six-part television series. His wife Jill Green was Executive Producer and also served in that capacity with his Alex Rider and Foyle’s War television series. It invites speculation about how their dinner table conversations must sparkle!
Leslie Manville and Timothy McMullan were cast as the stars in the respective roles of publishing editor Susan Ryeland and fictional ‘greatest detective’ Atticus Pünd. (Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes fans might beg to differ.) Atticus is a brilliantly conceived mash-up of these classic detective archetypes. According to an interview of Anthony Horowitz with Alex Dueben of CrimeReads, Lesley Manville at the conclusion of the filming of Moonflower Murders “mentioned she would love to do a third season.”
Shortly thereafter, the author completed Marble Hall Murders at a breakneck speed of six months enabling the third TV series to begin filming.
Susan Ryeland’s Unfinished Business
On with the show! Susan Ryeland has returned to England from an Aegean island idyll with her Greek boyfriend Andreas where they were managing a hotel. Both the job and the relationship had become stale.
In Magpie Murders, she was an influential editor with Cloverleaf Books until owner and friend Charles Clover murdered her client Alan Conway, author of nine best-selling mysteries, by tossing him off a tower. When confronted with this accusation, he knocked Susan out, set fire to the office and left her for dead. Charles was tried, convicted and given a lengthy jail sentence. Despite his heinous crimes, Charles remained well liked by colleagues in publishing making Susan somewhat of a pariah in the industry for testifying against him in court.
Starting over as a freelance editor with limited options, she is given the unwelcome assignment of shepherding novice writer Eliot Crace to finish a contracted book continuing the Atticus Pünd mystery series. It’s tentatively named Pünd’s Last Case and difficult Eliot is quickly getting on her last nerve. He is the youngest grandson of legendary children’s author Miriam Crace who died two decades earlier of heart disease. However, Eliot is convinced Gran was actually murdered and suspects he knows by whom.
Matriarch Miriam Crace bears some striking similarities to Great Britain’s Grande Dame of Children’s Literature Enid Blyton (1897-1968) who in her prime wrote as many as 50 books per year claiming she could sit at her typewriter and images would appear and words would flow. Individual works and several series of books about fairies and naughty children have been translated into many languages and sold over 600 million copies. In later years, Enid was disparaged for her xenophobia, sexism, overt racism, elitism, and depictions of what some considered as bordering on child abuse.
Changes in taste and critical backlash resulted in reduced sales and the gradual disappearance of Blyton’s works from library shelves. Similar allegations have been discreetly hinted at by a few critics of Miriam Crace with additional assertions of promiscuity and adultery surfacing. An inflammatory biography had been written but scrapped by the publisher amid conjecture that family money had purchased the author’s silence.
Her insistence that her entire family reside under her control at her Marble House estate, frequent threats to alter her will and the possibility of selling her literary rights to an American firm tend to substantiate claims that her death was a covered up murder.
Eldest son Jonathan Crace is the CEO of the Miriam Crace Estate and currently focused on the completion of a proposed 200 million dollar deal with Netflix. Any hint of scandal could squelch this megadeal and harm future book sales and tie-ins to the well established brand of his mother’s endearing and enduring Little People series of children’s books. Jonathan is alarmed that nephew Eliot may be plotting a revenge novel thinly disguised as a new Atticus Pünd mystery.
In a parallel universe, Lady Margaret Chalfont meets Atticus Pünd by chance in London the day before returning home and persuades him out of retirement to visit her at her Villa in Nice where her entire family is in residence. She wishes him to investigate an issue troubling her but defers that discussion until their planned meeting in the south of France. Alas, when Atticus and his assistant James Fraser arrive stylishly by train, the lovely woman is dead.
Pünd’s personal assistant Fraser functions as his Dr. Watson documenting the cases and currently typing his book The Landscape of Criminal Investigation. They are soon joined by Inspector Voltaire of the Sûreté who soon concurs murder by poison has taken place. Inconvenienced, the family is indignant; outraged that there should be an investigation since it was well established that Lady Chalfont had a heart condition. Her husband, Elmer Waysmith, is an American of independent means supported by Werner-Waysmith Art Galleries located in Nice and London that handle significant works of late 19th century and pre-WWII art.
Unable to find a suitable career or avocation, his unmarried son Robert, oversees daily operations. Most of the art is sourced by Mr. Werner, a rather mysterious, seldom seen business partner; an older German business man who resides in Zurich. Suspicion is heaped upon Elmer who stands to benefit from his wife’s death.
The proposed novel is unfinished but Susan Ryeland is sufficiently impressed with Eliot’s treatment of the first chapters to willingly work with him. She is immediately struck by the similarities of the Crace and fictional Chalfont families. Eliot clearly is using people he knew intimately or is related to as characters in this murder mystery set in the South of France. Their names either have the same initials or are anagrams. Other quirks, traits, and characteristics such as health conditions, and familial relationships are eerily similar.
Fictional Lady Margaret Chalfont, in parallel with her counterpart Miriam Crace, is wildly successful, has a heart condition and is poisoned. The two women even favor the same ginger tea with lemon. Susan begins to think if Lady Margaret’s killer is unveiled it might reveal Miriam’s murderer and begins her own investigation by interviewing Crace family members and associates ostensibly for background information.
For a tenner, Miriam’s estate Marble Hall is open to visitors. Susan makes the long drive for the tour and contrives to meet the author’s mixed-race son Frederick Turner who now manages the house. Frederick continues to live in the attic as he has done since he was adopted from an orphanage at age 5. Having been treated differently than her other children, he received an education of a lesser quality than her public school educated trio and a significantly reduced bequest but purportedly bears no ill-will to his benefactress.
Twists, Layers, and Literary Games
Anthony Horowitz has woven an articulate, attention-grabbing, puzzling and tangled web with many nuanced layers in Marble Hall Murders. Readers must focus to discern which family group is “real” and which is the literary creation of Eliot Crace. There are murders, vengeance, possibly illegal art sales, various elements of locked room mysteries and is complete with the anticipated customary denouement in the drawing room and Susan Ryeland does become a primary suspect. She is placed in grave danger as is her counterpart Atticus Pünd. It is an absolute pleasure to read and this reviewer will not reveal a smidgeon more lest your enjoyment be lessened. Marble House Murders would provide for lively discussions for select book discussion groups.
Since beginning with his first book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower, a humorous adventure tale for children, published before his 23rd birthday, Anthony Horowitz has written nearly 80 works of fiction for adults, YA and children, as well as numerous works for stage and television. He was chosen by the Ian Fleming estate to write three additional James Bond novels using, in part, unpublished material left by the late author. In addition, he has published two authorized Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
His vivid, fertile imagination ensures his work is captivating, engrossing and never formulaic or dull. Among the many accolades, awards and honors, Sir Anthony Horowitz was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2022 for services to literature.
About Anthony Horowitz:
Anthony Horowitz is one of the UK’s most prolific and versatile writers, acclaimed for his work across books, TV, film, and theatre. He’s the bestselling author of the Alex Rider series, which has sold over 21 million copies worldwide and inspired the hit Amazon Freevee adaptation. For adult readers, he’s penned original Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels, as well as the bestselling Magpie Murders and Hawthorne & Horowitz series. His TV credits include Foyle’s War, Collision, Injustice, and early episodes of Midsomer Murders. Horowitz’s metafictional thrillers are known for their wit, complexity, and inventive plotting. In 2022, he was awarded a CBE for services to literature. Beyond writing, he’s a patron of Home-Start Suffolk, a family support charity close to his heart. As he puts it: “For me, charity begins at Home-Start.” Whether on the page or screen, Anthony continues to captivate audiences around the world.
