Magpie Murders, Britbox, review: a whodunit pastiche
with a delicious conceit
4/5 stars
Lesley Manville stars in an ingenious detective series
that pokes fun at...detective series
By
Chris
Bennion
10 February
2022 • 5:00am
“There is
nowhere more dangerous than an English village,” says Alan Conway (Conleth
Hill) in the delectable Magpie Murders. And he should know, having become
enormously wealthy churning out eight Agatha Christie-lite crime novels about
the Teutonic genius Atticus Pünd, a 1950s private detective who cracks
seemingly impossible cases from the shires to the wolds. And now, in the
grounds of his country pile, the pompous novelist himself lies dead, murdered,
without - it seems - having written the final chapter of his final Atticus Pünd
novel, titled Magpie Murders. Dangerous places, English villages.
Anthony
Horowitz, who has adapted his own crime novel, came up with the idea while
working on the first series of Midsomer Murders, and that MM runs through this
MM like a stick of rock, from the village-green aesthetic to the comical modes
of despatch. Do not be fooled, however - Midsomer episodes are neat little
headscratchers; Magpie Murders is an elaborate, cryptic puzzle box, with
constantly shifting pieces. It is a whodunit about whodunits within a whodunit.
The conceit
is marvellous. We have the archetypal accidental sleuth - Lesley Manville’s
sharp book editor, Susan Ryeland - who zooms off in her vintage open-top sports
car to Conway’s quaint Suffolk village (Kersey, which, TV fact fans, was also
the setting for the first episode of Lovejoy) to track down the missing final
chapter, only to discover she has a murder to solve too.
The answer
to Conway’s death lies, naturally, within the pages of the unfinished Magpie
Murders, which we also see played out, with Tim McMullan as the ace detective.
Conway’s murder cannot be solved without the novel and Pünd’s final case cannot
be cracked without Ryeland’s help.
Confused
yet? There’s more. Conway’s final work seemed to predict his own death - both
he and Pünd have an inoperable brain tumour - and the novelist crammed his book
with people from his life, spoofing their foibles, airing their dirty laundry
and ultimately, potentially, pointing the finger at his murderer.
This means
most actors here are on double-bubble - Pippa Haywood plays Conway’s sadsack
sister in the real world and the sister of the murdered Sir Magnus in the
novel. Daniel Mays’ rude, interfering country copper DS Locke becomes Conway’s
bumbling, brainless bobbie DI Chubb. Matthew Beard doubles as Conway’s spurned
lover and Pünd’s sweet, dim assistant. And so on.
It is a
concept that keeps giving and giving, with the fictional versions giving you
clues towards the character and motives of the real-life characters, and vice
versa, as you and Ryeland scramble desperately to work out both whodunits at
the same time. Real-life characters who you thought Conway didn’t know suddenly
appear in Pünd’s world, causing you to rethink all your previous calculations.
Occasionally
it is maddening, but there is true satisfaction in watching the pieces of
Horowitz’s puzzle click into place. I watched with a notepad. I recommend it.
If there is
a drawback, it is that all this jiggery-pokery makes the characterisation -
with the exception of Ryeland and Conway - a little thin, with the supporting
cast in both worlds largely drawn from the whodunit stock cupboard, and the
“fictional-fictional” case is far harder to care about than the real-fictional
one.
Submit
yourself to all of the tongue-in-cheek genre tomfoolery, however, and it’s a
terrific series with enough in-jokes to keep any armchair detective happy -
episode three, for instance, begins with a flashback in which Ryeland is
telling Conway that he cannot begin with a flashback.
In a grey
TV landscape crammed with humdrum whodunits, Magpie Murders is a splash of
vivid colour.
Magpie
Murders is on Britbox now
Magpie
Murders
Magpie
Murders is a 2016 mystery novel by British author Anthony Horowitz and the
first novel in the Susan Ryeland series. The story focuses on the murder of a
mystery author and utilises a story within a story format.
The book
has been translated into multiple languages and has been adapted into a
six-part drama series.
Synopsis
Susan
Ryeland is the editor of the mystery author Alan Conway, who is known for his
well-received series of novels centring upon the detective Atticus Pünd and for
being very difficult to work with. Fans are eagerly awaiting Conway's latest
novel, rumoured to be the last in the series, but when Susan reads through the
manuscript she discovers that it is unfinished. When she travels to Conway's
home to retrieve the final chapters, she discovers that he is dead. In order to
discover the whereabouts of the final chapters Susan begins an investigation of
her own and finds that the novel may have been based on true events, causing
someone to murder Conway.
Development
Horowitz
first developed the concept of Magpie Murders during the first season of
Midsomer Murders, which premiered in 1997. He has stated that he wanted the
novel to "be more than just a murder mystery story" and to be "a
sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. How the
writers come up with the ideas; how these books are formed."
Release
Magpie
Murders was first released in hardback and e-book format in the United Kingdom
on 6 October 2016 through Orion. An audiobook adaptation narrated by Allan
Corduner and Samantha Bond was simultaneously released through Orion and BrillianceAudio.
The novel was given a release in the United States the following year through
Harper and HarperAudio in hardback, e-book, and audiobook format. Paperback
editions were released in the United Kingdom in 2017 and the United States in
2018.
In the
following years the novel has been released into multiple languages that
include Korean and Japanese (2018, through Kyŏnggi-do P'aju-si and 東京創元社, respectively), as well as Chinese
and German (2019, 新星出版社 and Berlin Insel Verlag, respectively).
Adaptation
In July
2020 Deadline announced that PBS’ Masterpiece would adapt the novel into a
six-part drama series and air it in the US, and on BritBox in the UK. Horowitz
will prepare the script and Masterpiece will produce it along with Jill Green
and Eleventh Hour Films. Tim McMullan was signed to portray the character of
Atticus Pünd after actor Timothy Spall pulled out of the production due to
scheduling issues, while Lesley Manville plays the central character of Susan.
Daniel Mays, Alexandros Logothetis, Jude Hill, and Claire Rushbrook are also
part of the series' cast.
Reception
Reception
for Magpie Murders was largely positive, earning a "Rave" rating from
the book review aggregator Book Marks based on eight independent reviews.[17]
It was reviewed by outlets such as the New York Times and Time magazine, the
latter of which called it the "thinking mystery fan’s ideal summer
thriller."[18][19][20] Common praise for the series centered upon its
characters and the use of the story within a story, with some criticism noting
that the story within a story also made it difficult to keep up with the goings
on.
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