Review: Vivien Horler
Marble Hall Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Century)
Churchill once described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, and I feel a bit the same about Marble Hall Murders. That might be putting it a bit strongly, but this crime thriller is fiendishly ingewikkeld.
There are two separate stories in this novel, which superficially bear no relation to each other, until you realise they do. There are two sets of characters to keep track of, some whom have names very similar to those in the other cast. You need to keep your wits about you. But it’s a great, long read, running to nearly 600 pages.
Susan Ryland is a freelance book editor who at the start of Marble Hall Murders splits up with her partner in Crete and heads home to London. She is 55 and starting over.
Soon after her return she has the offer of a gig from the boss of a publishing house. A now dead crime writer, Alan Conway, had written a series of nine hugely successful novels featuring a detective called Atticus Pünd, before dying in unfortunate circumstances.
Now the publishing company has had a bright idea – they want to publish a 10th book in the series, a “continuation” novel by, obviously, a different author.
Already 30 000 words have been written. The new author is a young man called Eliot Crace, who has two failed novels behind him. An underwhelmed Susan knows him, and tells the publisher she has met him twice; the first time he was drunk, the second time covered in blood after apparently falling off a bus. The publisher assures Susan Eliot has matured.
The original author, Conway, reportedly didn’t enjoy writing murder mysteries despite making a fortune from them, and amused himself by hiding puzzles in his stories, word games, anagrams, acrostics and cryptograms.
When Susan meets the matured Eliot, he tells her he’s put lots of puzzles and riddles into his manuscript too.
Eliot, it turns out, is the grandson of a woman called Miriam Crace who grew rich by writing stories for children – think Enid Blyton. She was able to buy a house in the country – Marble Hall – which she insisted was to be the home of her children and grandchildren. While beloved by her public, she was fiercely controlling and it appears her family all hated her.
She died unexpectedly, and it was suspected she might have been poisoned.
Susan sits down with Eliot’s half-done manuscript and discovers, to her surprise, that it’s good. The story is included in this book, and it really is good. It’s set in the south of France, and elderly Lady Chalfont’s whole family have come to spend the summer with her. And then, clearly unwell with heart problems, she dies suddenly, probably poisoned. Atticus Pünd is summoned.
I have to introduce a spoiler her – I don’t know how else to take this review forward. After producing another 20 000 words about Lady Chalfont and her family, in which Eliot says he has hidden the answer to what happened to his much-disliked grandmother, Eliot is killed in a hit-and-run accident in central London.
This is devastating, obviously to his family but also to us, because now we’ll never know what happened to Lady Chalfont et al – and by this time we care. Plus the police suspect Susan of having been behind the wheel.
Are you still with me?
Marble Hall Murders is the third volume of a trilogy that began with Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, the second of which was made into a hit BBC drama. But you don’t have to have read the first two – I hadn’t.
This is a great winter read, full of twists and turns, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But you do have to keep up.