Moonflower Murders: A Novel

First the good part. This book is clever and fun to read. However, there are so many glaring editorial errors, it is hard to get past those and concentrate on the plot twists, not to mention the red and other herrings. Sure, it's just a cleverly written book within a book but perhaps the author was too intent on hidden meanings and forgot that some things make absolutely no sense whatsoever. All in all, though, if one can overlook the appalling editing, it's worth the time invested to read it, even if you guess the murderer long before the end.

There were so many characters and relationships it was hard to keep track of them. Also, none of them was very interesting- THEN- just as you think you have everyone identified, doesn't he stop the story and start a new story with all new characters, but who are supposed to be based on the old characters. Too much work . I gave up and skipped to the ending. Ending was OK. But then, there was supposed to be a clue in the second story, and there really wasn't- so I am very glad I didn't waste my time trying to figure that out.

I'm a big fan of Horowitz, I've read every book he's written, so when I saw he had a new book out I was excited. Unfortunatly 'Mayflower Murders' tanks from the get go because the characters just didn't hold my interest. They are a peevish, superficial lot that come off like carrdboard cut-outs. The narrator over-describes the scenes with miles of descriptions of this neighborhood, that town, these food items, etc. and then throws in these silly passages about her boyfriend who is so underdveloped as to not really ever come to life. The narrator is suppose to be looking for a missing woman but instead focuses on a a murder that happened eight years before this woman's dissapearence and jeez does this search for the solution to an eight year old murder prove tedious as she hand walks you through the gay scene of London with its rent boys, kinky sex, and gay betrayals. The ending is strictly predictable and hardly worth plowing through.

I very much enjoyed this book, or these books as there was a book within a book. Other reviews indicate that readers had trouble with the "many" characters. My impression was that the characters were well developed and I had zero problem with remembering them or how their individual plotlines support the primary storylines of each mystery. Many tangential plotlines involving the various key characters, all of which I thought were resolved in a believable manner. The two mysteries are fun reads and both are whodunnits. For me, this was a wonderful, entertaining read as have been all of Mr. Horowitz's prior tomes.

Moonflower Murders sounds promising, a murder mystery within a murder mystery. Except that the narrator is irritating, a woman who leaves her idyllic life in Greece to return to England where she just happens to have her car in storage so she can set off to investigate murders. She finds suspects and questions them ad nauseam. All of this is rather boring. Then we get the mystery in a mystery which is better written and much more interesting except we are supposed to recognize characters from the previous narrative and get clues to the identity of the real murderer, which doesn't work. By that point I couldn't remember half of the people from the first part because they are not well drawn characters. I finished the book anyway and found the conclusion ridiculous. In spite of all this I think Horowitz is a good writer at times but really couldn't handle the script he dreamed up for himself. Instead of being clever, the book comes off as tedious and unbelievable.

Moonflower Murders continues characters introduced in The Magpie Murders with Susan Ryland as the detective. Moonflower pulls Susan away from Crete where she has been running a hotel with her boyfriend Andreas back to cold and damp England. Each book revolves around Susan's relationship with Alan Conway, a mystery writer whose books she edited. Resolving the Moonflower cold case mystery involves going back to Conway's book. Literary, interesting, with odd and colorful characters, Moonflower Murders isn't exciting in an obvious way. It is aimed at the reader who appreciates excellent writing and a pull everything together solution. I loved it and will reread it soon.

Of course this is an amazing book, who is surprised? But one more Kindle failure too many. The book froze halfway though and would not advance - it just loops back to the beginning at about 36% through the book. I am just sick of these Kindle tech failures. Fix your gremlins, people. And my device is brand new, so hey, it isn't that.Horowitz continues to entertain and amaze with a compendium of intellectual twists and turns.....of course, I haven't FINISHED the book yet - waiting for my hard copy to arrive! Can hardly stand the suspense.

Rating: 4.4/5"There's something very satisfying about a complicated whodunnit that actually makes sense."Anthony Horowitz is such a talented and versatile writer. He seems to be able to turn his writing hand to just about anything and make a suitably superb job of whatever the subject matter is: For young adult readers there are the Alex Rider books (and others); for the theatre he has written the excellent "Mindgame"; for adults he has also penned a variety of thrillers; he has produced work written sympathetically in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming in creating additional adventures for Sherlock Holmes and James Bond respectively; and then there is all of his television screenplay writing too. I suspect he could even rewrite the telephone directory and make it an entertaining read!In "Moonflower Murders" we are reintroduced to Susan Ryeland, whom we first met a few years ago in the wonderful "Magpie Murders". The format here is again similar, in that there is a book contained within a book. I won't rehash the whole plot here, as the synopsis and other existing reviews have covered that ground already.The two stories are both "whodunnits" and written in the classical style of the "golden age". At the start, and again at the end of "Moonflower Murders", Horowitz tells the story of the current mystery, being investigated by former editor, Susan Ryland. Sandwiched in between we have a separate, but related mystery penned by the fictitious Alan Conway and featuring the Poirot-like German sleuth Atticus Pünd.Both mysteries stand up in their own right, but, as he did in "Magpie Murders", Anthony Horowitz cleverly interweaves the relevance of one with the other. However, the thing that impresses me most when Horowitz does this, is the fact that he manages to write in a markedly different, but nonetheless authentic and credible style as Alan Conway. In the same way that he successfully adapted his writing for the Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels, Anthony Horowitz "becomes" Alan Conway for 224 pages. That takes some skill and it is something I am not sure that many other writers could pull off as adeptly.This is another hugely entertaining read from the pen of Anthony Horowitz. I am only stopping short of awarding the full 5 stars because of the fact that he used essentially the same mechanic in Magpie Murders, so this time around it does not have the same level of originality ... but it is still a hellishly good book.

I like murder mysteries, especially those with complicated plots, but this was so complicated it tied itself in knots.I can see that having a book within the book seemed like a good idea, but we kept being reminded of the similarity of characters in the other half, and that was confusing. There was too much self reference and unlikely behaviour.The narrator was unconvincing as a female: to begin I thought it was a man with a male partner.I had no idea who had done any of it, so I suppose it was a success in that respect.Otherwise I didn't enjoy it much.

For the first time ever since using Kindle, I just had to return/delete this book halfway through, even though it was too late to receive a refund.I faithfully ploughed through part of it, found it tedious, with too many awful characters, and, as others have pointed out, too much unnecessary padding and repetition.And then it became a 'book within a book'!Enough, I can't waste any more of lockdown reading a book which doesn't catch my interest. Sorry.Or is it just me?

this book is very clever, seemed very long and became very tedious. I did manage to keep up with the twists and turns of the story, but by the end of the book I was just pleased to have finished it.

I'm sorry but having read book 1 of this series and feeling flat I thought I'd try book 2 to see if it improved.My God! How wrong I was. Just as with its brother absolutely nothing has happened! In book one I persevered as I was intrigued by how long the written could possibly string out the wait to the ending I had forseen by chapter 2! Throughout I thought 'no, I must be wrong, that's too obvious!' But low and behold ....With book 2 I haven't the finest idea where its heading which would be great in the usual 'who dun it' scenario but here is accompanied by an utter lack of enthusiasm for a protagonist who frankly is dull and, just not a very nice person! Usually we'd see a complex character with shades of black white and grey. Here we just have a slight beige lady who is self evolved, ungrateful and beyond slow at making the links required to solve a basic problem. Probably because she insists in looking in all the wrong places and asking all the wrong questions whilst having an inner crisis about the man in her life who is obviously deeply in love with her and shares a life most would kill for! By 48% of the way through I'm hoping the elusive murderer will turn up just to end the torture of putting up with her!It's a strong no from me.A now devoted Poirot fan. Thank god for Agatha Christie!