Publishers Weekly
★ 04/07/2025
Horowitz dazzles with the brilliant third entry in his Susan Ryeland series (after Moonflower Murders). At the outset, Susan has just broken up with her Greek boyfriend, Andreas, leaving him and their bustling Crete hotel behind for her dreary London flat and a new freelance project with Causton Books. She’s been hired to edit the late Alan Conway’s unfinished final novel featuring detective Atticus Pund, which has been completed by young writer Eliot Crace. Soon, Susan discovers an ulterior motive behind Eliot’s additions to the story: he believes someone in his violently competitive family poisoned his famous grandmother, Miriam Crace, author of an überpopular children’s book series and owner of Marble Hall estate, and has nestled clues about his suspicions in Conway’s manuscript, using the fictional Chalfonts as a stand-in for the Craces. Thus Horowitz throws down a gauntlet for the reader: will finding the killer in Eliot’s novel, which takes up a solid chunk of this book’s page count, translate to a conviction in the frame story? Horowitz is at the top of his game here, linking past and present in a virtuoso finale worthy of Agatha Christie. Fans will clamor for the sequel. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown UK. (May)
From the Publisher
"Horowitz dazzles with the brilliant third entry in his Susan Ryeland series . . . . Horowitz is at the top of his game here, linking past and present in a virtuouso finale worthy of Agatha Christie. Fans will clamor for the sequel." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The dividing lines between reality and fiction (a Horowitz trademark) are deliciously intertwined." — Financial Times
"Another marvelous metafictional mystery." — Library Journal
"The novel-within-a-novel format works superbly once again as Ryeland rushes to figure out what's real and what's fictional before she becomes a victim herself." — Town and Country
"Horowitz's most extended and intricately plotted [whodunit] yet." — Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
★ 04/01/2025
Editor Susan Ryeland returns to London for a third adventure (following Moonflower Murders and Magpie Murders) after a self-imposed exile on the island of Crete. She's eager to reestablish her name in the publishing world, but her next freelance job is one she does not want: collaborating with troubled writer Eliot Crace on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel entitled Pünd's Last Case. The grandson of adored children's author Miriam Crace, Eliot reveals to Susan a nightmarish childhood living with his grandmother at Marble Hall, at odds with public perception. Reading Eliot's nearly complete manuscript, Susan recognizes in the poisoning of Lady Margaret Chalfont a lightly veiled attempt by Eliot to implicate a family member in the death of Miriam Crace 20 years before. Horowitz's cast of characters/suspects are entertaining, and his dialogue pitch-perfect, as Eliot's drunken and vociferous claims lead to a body count. Susan must race to solve Pünd's last case before another murder is announced—her own. VERDICT Horowitz crafts a deliciously witty, clever, and hefty mystery--two mysteries in one, really--in a terrific art-imitating-life send-up that works as a stand-alone as well as a series entry.—Peggy Kurkowski
Kirkus Reviews
2025-04-04
Sharpen your mental pencils. Editor Susan Ryeland is taking on her most baffling mystery-within-a-mystery.
Now that Susan’s back from Crete and her latest romance, her boss at Causton Books, Michael Flynn, wants her to work with Eliot Crace, a failed mystery author who’s writing a sequel to the late Alan Conway’s tales of detective Atticus Pünd, which she knows far too much about already. As she reads Eliot’s first installment, Susan gradually becomes aware of something seasoned fans will have assumed all along—that the central mystery and the leading suspects inPünd’s Last Case are all based on Eliot’s family, whose matriarch, world-famous children’s author Miriam Crace, died 20 years ago under circumstances that everyone involved insists weren’t at all suspicious. Teased by the first and simplest of three key anagrams Eliot has sneaked into his manuscript, Susan asks him about all those parallels, whose revelation would surely offend the rest of the family and very likely endanger the big-ticket deal that Eliot’s uncle, family estate manager Jonathan Crace, is negotiating over video rights to the Littles, Miriam’s adorable franchise characters. The mystery Eliot’s created around the fatal poisoning of Lady Margaret Chalfont broadly hints that Miriam was murdered as well. Susan’s attempt to sift through the parallels in the unfinished manuscript and figure out who killed Lady Margaret and what light that knowledge may shed on the death of Eliot’s grandmother is seriously upended when there’s a second murder and DI Ian Blakeney identifies Susan as his prime suspect. No wonder she vows at the fadeout to have nothing more to do with Atticus Pünd: “Never. Never again.” Uh-huh.
Susan’s third metafictional whodunit is Horowitz’s most extended and intricately plotted yet—at least until next year.
