Marble Hall

 Anthony Horowitz does it again with the third installment of the Susan Ryeland mystery novels.  

This time the novel is titled Marble Hall and it so cleverly picks up right where the second book ended.  Susan Ryeland reminds the reader that Atticus Pund, the great detective was murdered and Ryeland’s life also almost ended as the last novel came to a close.  She had moved to Greece with her boyfriend and was going to start a new life.

But now she is back in New York and having just moved into a new apartment by herself she is looking for editing work again with a new publisher. She has realized that she needs to live in New York and work in publishing, the quiet island life is not for her.

The first job to come along is a new young talent who is writing a conclusion novel with the protagonist being Atticus Pund.  He has an idea to continue the series even though the original author is dead.

But all is not as it may seem and Susan gets mixed up with the writer and his family and strange things start to happen.  Life and fiction start to overlap and the secret to an old murder and a new murder may be revealed in the script that is being written.

Twisty and tangled plots run through the novel with a story within the story and characters that blur the lines of fiction and “fiction”.  I may have solved part of the mystery as I lay awake last night after reading to just before the reveal chapter, but then there was of course another twist that I was not expecting… 

Horowitz is a master of the craft and again brings an entertaining, incredibly well written mystery that there are quotes to underline and ideas to think about long after the book is closed.