MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz

I love thrillers, but this is more of a murder mystery set in a quaint English town in 1955.  And it’s actually a murder mystery within a murder mystery, but you won’t realize that until you are deep into the book.  The outer story is that of editor Susan Ryeland, who presents us with the ninth installment in Alan Conway’s whodunit series, starring private detective Atticus Pünd.  In Conway’s novel, when wealthy aristocrat Magnus Pye is beheaded, Atticus has to reevaluate the death of Pye’s housekeeper, Mary Blakiston, whose death was originally deemed accidental.  Magnus was not well-liked and was about to sell the town’s beloved Dingle Dell to a developer.  Needless to say, almost everyone in town has a motive for murdering him, so that Pünd has a slew of suspects to interrogate, including the vicar, the vicar’s wife, the groundskeeper, Pye’s sister, Pye’s wife, Pye’s wife’s boyfriend, Mary’s son and his girlfriend, Mary’s estranged husband, a shady antiques dealer and his wife, and Pye’s neighbor.  And I’ve probably left out a few.  I enjoyed all aspects of this book, including the writing, and the outer story even has pretty good character development, as everyone in Susan’s orbit becomes a suspect in another murder, with her as the bumbling amateur detective.  What makes this book special is the nesting of the two stories, which I thought the author handled very skillfully.  This is a beach read that will keep you guessing.  It’s also very entertaining without a single stitch of obvious humor, but the mashup of two murder mysteries is clever and fun without exactly being funny.