Horowitz’s Magpie Murder mysteries were recommended to me by my sister, but I had never gotten around to read them until this book appeared on the New Book Shelf at the Mary L. Blood Memorial Library in Brownsville, Vermont. (Conflict of interest warning:  I am the chairman of the board of trustees of that library.)  The book’s a good one.

Horowitz has written a strange and often confusing mixture of the real and the made-up.  The narrator and main character is Horowitz himself, and he is writing about what appear to be real events including his screenplays for the long running Foyle’s War on TV and his best-selling Rider series for teens.  But if all that is real, what’s not???  This becomes relevant as Horowitz becomes entangled with a laconic, rough hewn ex-detective, Hawthorne, and a series of murders in today’s London.

At first I was skeptical, confused, and almost stopped reading after the first 25 pages or so, but then I slowly but surely was hooked and read the 386 pages in two days of quiet on our Vermont couch.  It was entertaining and the final twist reminded me of Agatha Christie’s surprise endings, a not unexpected outcome given Horowitz’s love for her work.

This is a good book to curl up with by the fire with a glass of single malt scotch and a few empty hours this winter.  Great literature or a timeless classic, it is not, but a reader always needs a varied diet and this one will appeal to your need for sugar, fat, and caffeine. Enjoy it!