3 Nerve-Shredding New Thrillers

Marble Hall Murders

by Anthony Horowitz

Horowitz’s diabolically clever MARBLE HALL MURDERS (Harper, 592 pp., $28) begins as Susan Ryeland, a British book editor, starts reading the newest installment in a crime series featuring a Poirot-like detective named Atticus Pünd.

The book looks promising — the plot is enticing, the writing sharp, the detective as canny as ever. But Susan soon realizes that what she’s reading isn’t “just a cheerful murder mystery bringing back a much-loved character,” as she puts it, but rather a “bubbling cauldron” of hatred, infidelity, greed and murder drawn from the troubled past of the writer, Eliot Crace.

Eliot, who has been hired to continue the series following the untimely death of the original author, is squirrelly, pugnacious and keen to make trouble. “I’ve put in a secret message,” he says of his work-in-progress. “If you can work out the puzzle, you’ll know the truth about what happened.”

That’s only the beginning of Horowitz’s multilevel romp, which serves up an elegant plot while lampooning writers, publishers, murderers, rich people and golden-age mystery stories. It’s a cliché to describe prolific authors as being at the top of their game (and often seems to suggest the opposite), but it’s true here. “Marble Hall Murders” is as cunning a mystery as you’ll read all year.

The best thing is Susan herself. Stubborn and fearless, she has high literary standards, a fondness for Garamond typeface — and a dangerous habit of collecting enemies.