Summary: The last book Susan Reynold is set to publish changes her life forever in this classic British whodunnit mystery novel. Magpie Murders is a mystery book within another mystery. This book covers the mystery of what happened to the missing pages of a detective novel written by Alan Conway – Ms. Reynold’s most famous client.  And within this is the actual manuscript of Mr. Conway’s latest novel which is left incomplete. The endings of both the manuscript and the book are stupendous! I kept guessing until  the end!

I got this as an audio book and both readers did a magnificent job in portraying the characters, but when I saw this book available at my local library and we had an 11 hour road trip coming up, I decided to get the book and finish it by reading it myself. Anthony Horrowitz is a tremendous author. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that he also is a writer for ITV’s Midsommer Mysteries and Foyle’s War. I love both those series! And like these series, the manuscript part of the book doesn’t have any obscenities. The actual book part does though. The author of the manuscript – Alan Conway – is gay and there is a brief interview with his live in boyfriend that does get a little informative, but not much. Besides that brief interview, there is no other sexual content.

If you like classic mysteries, you will truly enjoy this book. The two stories are very well developed and they both left me guessing until the very end. For a moment I thought that I would never know what happened at the end of the manuscript because it leaves the reader hanging for about 200 pages, but thankfully the end was revealed. I read through that last part voraciously – my patience had waned!

The book is almost 500 pages because of the two stories in it. Because of its length and some adult themes I would only let my older teens read it.

You can buy the book here