So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. He reveals that Mary Blakiston’s son Robert was behind Magnus’s murder, and although Mary’s death was an accident, it set off a fatal chain of events within the village.Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer. Within the world of Conway’s novel, Atticus solves his final crime. When Charles discovers that Susan knows the truth and is planning to go to the police, he tries to kill her and throw the missing chapter into a fire. She discovers that Charles killed Alan to ensure the success of his publishing house and used part of Alan’s manuscript as the suicide note. While attempting to find the missing content, she becomes increasingly involved in deciphering the suspicious circumstances surrounding Alan’s death.Īfter some persistent sleuthing, Susan finds the last chapter of the manuscript in a drawer of her boss Charles’s desk. Soon after, she discovers that Alan Conway supposedly committed suicide. Upon finishing the manuscript, Susan discovers that the last chapter of the novel is missing.

Magpie Murders ends just as Atticus is about to reveal the murderer’s identity. Atticus investigates each of the suspicious villagers, piecing together the events surrounding the two deaths. Two weeks later, an unknown suspect murders wealthy local Magnus Pye. On the night of Mary’s funeral, someone burgles Pye Hall. Mary Blakiston, a local busybody and housekeeper of Pye Hall, dies in what seems like an accident. Although Atticus is terminally ill, he travels to the town to unravel the mystery in a last act of detective work. In Alan’s latest story, Magpie Murders, Atticus investigates two related deaths in the small town of Saxby-on-Avon. The novels pay homage to the greats of crime fiction, including Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Atticus solves grisly mysteries in these sleepy, secret-harboring communities. Alan’s novels are set in small English villages where everybody knows everybody. After working with Alan for years, Susan is intimately familiar with his classic detective character, Atticus Pünd. The story begins when book editor Susan Ryeland receives a manuscript for bestselling author Alan Conway.

Magpie murders novel