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Atticus Pünd, annoyingly brilliant mid-twentieth-century refugee ratiocinator, is at it again. In "Atticus Pünd Takes the Case," the third bestselling adventure penned by the late Alan Conway of dubious and questionable memory, glamorous American movie star Melissa James, owner of the idyllic yet unprofitable Moonflower Hotel in a twee tourist trap in Devon, turns up dead. Whodunit? Predictably, Pünd finds out. If that sounds like an unpromising synopsis of a mystery novel, that is precisely what its actual author, Midsomer Murders creator Anthony Horowitz intends. The third Pünd novel is embedded precisely in the middle of Horowitz's second account of the fictional Conway's equally fictional editor, Susan Ryeland's, adventures cleaning up the messes he left behind, and, in the process, solving some real-life mysteries.
Horowitz's first Ryeland/Conway mystery, MAGPIE MURDERS, soon—pandemic allowing—to become a Masterpiece miniseries—introduced this metafictional formula and took readers on a witty, whimsical, often caustic ride through not only a suspenseful murder mystery but a thoughtful examination of how mysteries work on us and why their conventions help us to explore enigmas greater than the identities of fictional killers. MOONFLOWER MURDERS does the same. After the dramatic dissolution of Conway's publishing company, documented in MAGPIE MURDERS, Ryeland retreats to Greece, where she attempts to run a bed and breakfast and forge a relationship with her easygoing lover Andreas. When business and relationship hit the rocks, and a hotelier couple, the Trehernes, invite her back to England to investigate their adult daughter Cecily's disappearance, clues to which they believe may be found in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, Ryland succumbs to the temptation. She puts off rereading the novel, but, as in MAGPIE MURDERS, it demands attention. Also as in MAGPIE MURDERS, the most compelling character is the late Alan Conway, whose characterization by Horowitz is infinitely more engaging than his characterization of Pünd.
Is the answer to Cecily Treherne's vanishing to be found sub rosa in Pünd's third case, each personality, location, and clue matching up to a real-life one in the manner of Poe's "Mystery of Marie Rôget?" Certainly not. That would be too easy. To solve the Treherne mystery, Ryeland must read Conway's tripe not like a mystery lover, but a book lover—or like the editor she once was and might someday get to be again.
Admittedly, the slotted-in Conway tome is a bit of a slog, as gimmicky as its fake ISBN number and fallacious declaration that no characters are based on real people living or dead—but it makes the reader play Ryeland's role, returning to select pages cited by the characters to search for clues they claim to have found. Last Christmas, Horowitz delivered two mysteries—his and Conway's—in the form of an advent calendar. Even if you can predict what secret goodies lurk behind the little doors, you must open them. That's the effect that Horowitz's meta-mystery produces. And as Pünd reportedly features in nine published adventures, not to mention any lost manuscripts, it is likely that we will see more of "his" work come to light.
"There's something very fascinating about a complicated whodunit that actually makes sense," Ryeland observes; such books "never cheat the reader." This is what she likes in Conway's work, but it's an equally apposite description of Horowitz's. This reviewer particularly looks forward to the use that Horowitz and Ryeland will make of the Pünd whodunit Gin and Cyanide.
§ Rebecca Nesvet is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. She specializes in nineteenth-century literature. https://uwgb.academia.edu/RebeccaNesvet
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, December 2020
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