Rebecca Reviews | Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

I was kindly sent a copy by Netgalley for the purpose of review. All thoughts and opinions are our own. This post contains affiliate links.

Do you remember author visits at your school when you were younger? I do – and I remember two of them extremely vividly in my mind. One of them happens to be Anthony Horowitz and I’ve followed his career ever since, even through his occasional writing for Poirot and Midsomer Murders and of course, his creation of Foyles War.

I had super high hopes for this one!

You can pick up your own copy here {affiliate link}.

Synopsis

Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend. But life isn’t as idyllic as it should be: exhausted by the responsibility of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, Susan is beginning to miss her literary life in London – even though her publishing career once entangled her in a lethal literary murder plot.

So when an English couple come to visit with tales of a murder that took place in a hotel the same day their daughter Cecily was married there, Susan can’t help but find herself fascinated.

And when they tell her that Cecily has gone missing a few short hours after reading Atticus Pund Takes The Case, a crime novel Susan edited some years previously, Susan knows she must return to London to find out what has happened.

The clues to the murder and to Cecily’s disappearance must lie within the pages of this novel.

But to save Cecily, Susan must place her own life in mortal danger…

My Review

Having been a fan of Anthony Horowitz’s work since I was a kid, I was intrigued to see what this book would be like. I hadn’t read the previous book so was going into it blindly, not knowing a jot about any of the characters however this didn’t dull the enjoyment.

I enjoyed the storyline immensely and really struggled with who the culprit could be and I enjoyed the ‘book within a book’ although I felt at times it was a little laboured and went on a little too long. I couldn’t help drawing comparisons between the fictional detective Atticus Pund in the book within a book and another fictional detective in Hercule Poirot although it was explained that Conway, the author of the Atticus Pund novel, was a Christie fan.

I did enjoy this read although not as much as the author’s other work as at times the storyline just dragged on a little too long where it would have benefited by being a bit shorter.

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars.