10 Books Like Magpie Murders

Anthony Horowitz, the author of “The Magpie Murders”, is a famous British novelist and screenwriter. He is famous as the world’s master detective novelist, or the only person ever certified by the Conan Doyle Title Society to continue Sherlock Holmes. Once published, the book “The Magpie Murders” swept the world’s major lists of mystery novels. It was highly recognized by other mystery writers and scholars, as well as by readers around the world. The novel also tells a story written by the famous deduction writer of the 21st century, Alan Conway. Through the subtle design of the book within a book, the investigation of the murder of the writer, which is about the detection of a murder case in an English village in 1955.

The first half of the novel shows Alan Conway’s detective novel “The Magpie Murders”. It tells the story of the accidental death of the housekeeper of a baronial mansion in an English village. But not long after the man of the mansion Magnus Pye was also killed and died. Detective Atticus Pound in the assistant and police inspector’s assistance to find many clues to the case. Just when the truth is close, the pen turns to the 21st century. The well-known writer Alan Conway left behind a suicide note.

It was because of Alan’s death that the final part of “The Magpie Murders” was not handed over to Clover Press. Susan, the editor of the book, visited Alan’s family and friends one by one in search of the final manuscript. But in the process, she increasingly found that Alan’s suicide was not so simple.

To sum up, the book actually tells two stories, one is the murder of detective novel writer Alan Conway, and one is a detective story written by this detective novelist. And the two stories are related through editor Susan’s search for the end draft of the detective story. However, the two stories have nothing to do wit each other in the final ending. The detective in “The Magpie Murder” chooses to commit suicide. While Susan, as the detective in Alan’s murder, is attacked and rescued at the end of the investigation.

I feel that after reading the first half of the book, reading the second story is like doing crossword puzzles and analogical reasoning. When I see a character I will go to the first story to look for the one associated with him. And I very much look forward to seeing the end to verify their own speculation. I think this is a little reflection of the clever design of this novel. In addition to the above aspects, there are many details are the classic writing techniques of British detective novels. For example, the metaphor of the nursery rhyme in the story, the names of the characters in the magpie murder case are a kind of bird, etc.

In addition, this novel also reflects the dark side of human nature through the characters and plot settings. Inferiority complex, vanity, deception, and cowardice are all exposed through the cases in the story. I believe that each reader will have his or her own understanding and opinion about each character after reading. This is also the opportunity of thinking that all socialist detective novels can bring us.

10 Books Like Magpie Murders

The Magpie Murders is a very typical mystery novel. A mystery novel is a literature of deduction with mysterious characteristics, which can evoke people’s instincts and stimulate their curiosity. Generally speaking, the pattern of mystery novels is: criminal commits a crime – detective appears – investigation – solving the case. Throughout those best-seller lists, mystery novels top the list and occupy the list in a large and continuous manner. These novels often combine science, legalism and humanism, and are loved and sought after by readers for their twisted plots, strong suspense and rigorous logic. Here are ten suspense novels similar to “The Magpie Murders”, hope you like them.

1. Moonflower Murders

Continuing the plot of her previous film “The Magpie Murders,” editor Susan Rylan comes back from the dead and moves to a Greek island with her longtime boyfriend. And they run a family hotel on the island. But life goes from imaginary to real – everything about the island hotel leaves her exhausted. Susan begins to miss her career as a publisher in London. Even though her publishing career had put her in mortal danger. One day, Susan’s boredom is shattered by the arrival of two unexpected guests. She is approached by a couple from England who tell her about a murder that took place in their family’s hotel on the day of their daughter Cecily’s wedding.

Susan can’t help but feel fascinated by it. They claim that Cecily disappeared a few hours after reading Atticus Pound, a crime novel written by Alan Conway. Susan help edit and publish this book several years ago. To save Cecily, Susan knows she must return to London and find out the truth.

The Owl Murders” set contains two books, namely “The Owl Murders” and “Atticus Pound to solve the case”. The relationship between the two books is not up and down, but each book is an independent and complete story. But the two books have a great connection. This is perhaps a bit like Russian nesting dolls, especially the nested relationship between reality and fiction. The authorship of the real writer and the identity of the editor in the novel are switched. This brings the reader a wonderful experience that everyone is like the editor who is trying to solve the mystery.

Perhaps this is the most interesting aspect of “immersive” reasoning. The reader forgets the author’s intention, forgets the story itself, and focuses on the space and events shaped by the book. While the author intentionally blurs the border between reality and fiction, and experiences the joy of solving the mystery along with the characters.

You can read the two books together or separately. No matter which one you read first. It really does not hurt, because you can not help but go back and read it again. Because the author’s own structure is such, as the book editor Leyland knew her author Alan Conway. Conway, the author of the book Horowitz is also a person who likes to play with words, and can even be said to have played a realm. When the final discovery of the murderer that feeling like our daily guessing hysterical as laughable. The author place answer is placed in the most conspicuous position, but also we most often ignore the position. And all this is the reason why readers like this series.

2. Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

This book tells the story of the great detective Poirot on the Orient Express cleverly solved a strange case of murder. Poirot rides on the Orient Express and is awakened three times during the night. And early the next morning he finds that Rachel, a wealthy American businessman, has been murdered and stabbed 12 times. Based on the suspicious signs he observed and the interrogation of the people on the train, and combined with the 12-member jury system in the United States and other circumstances, Poirot successfully uncovered a “collective revenge” strange case.

I feel like I unconsciously engage with Agatha’s work every time I read it. The author does not make it difficult for the reader in terms of expertise, investigation of the situation or evidence. She tries to compensate for the reader’s disadvantage in reading, providing a platform for the reader to think. Instead of making a fuss about the investigation and other issues, the plot is truly convoluted and bizarre. Yet within reason. Let the reader according to the plot and the increase evidence, to guess, to think and overturn their own conclusions. And then continue to guess… . Until the final answer. The reader’s thinking has been in line with the development of the plot, and the answer given both in the reasonable and necessarily in the unexpected. So I can’t help but admire the author’s careful thinking and clever ideas.

Ms. Christie is an old-fashioned writer. She takes her time to develop the story and characters. The story can be slow paced at first, but as you become immersed in the plot, it all builds. Ms. Christie’s descriptive language will magically transport you to that scene – the 1930’s luxury Orient Express. I’ll give you a little hint here: search the Internet for pictures of the Orient Express. And you’ll see the train as it was really built, which will help you understand all the plot that happens in the story.

3. The Silent Patient

Thirty-three-year-old beautiful painter Alicia shot her husband, Gabrielle, a fashion photographer, in her studio. She shot him five times in the face, leaving the dead Gabrielle completely disfigured. The police soon arrived at the scene and arrested Alicia, who has since become a “silent patient. No matter what she was asked, she would not speak, not by the police, not by the psychiatric office, not by her relatives. Theo, a psychotherapist, is fascinated by her story and hopes to help her out of the deadly silence through psychotherapy. He is convinced that only he can make Alicia talk.

“The Silent Patient” is the debut novel by British author Alex Macleods. In this book, Alex not only deals with a lot of Greek mythology and psychology, but also uses a very heart-wrenching storyline to link the two to each other. The author describes the entire case in the first person. There are many echoes of the storyline before and after. The story is told from the narrator’s point of view with two narrative lines. One that unfolds and advances the plot with the narrative of counselor Theo Ferber. And the other with Alicia’s diary to add background information that Theo cannot know.

The reason why this book is so successful is that the characters are distinctive and three-dimensional. Almost every character has its own impressive personality traits. In fact, everyone in the book is a patient. They all have their own secrets and knots, only some people know themselves and others do not. Readers can follow the plot and think deeply, from some of the storyline can also reflect the real situation in our real world, reflecting the ugly side of human nature.

4. The Woman in the Window

Anna lives alone in a small four-story building in an affluent suburban neighborhood of New York City. A former psychiatrist. She is unable to leave her house after a traumatic experience. She spends her days spying on her neighbors through their windows, watching old black and white movies, and drinking alcohol. One night, Anna hears a scream, and then she witnesses a murder through her window. The victim being the matriarch of her new neighbors, the Russells. She eagerly calls the police to explain what she saw. But the neighbors deny that anything unusual is happening in the house.

Anna then receives threatening emails containing pictures of her sleeping late at night. She wondered who had slipped into her house like nobody’s business. Horrified, she calls the police again. But they suspect that she took the photos herself and that the email address appears to be her own. Was it all just a hallucination on her part? Did the woman who was stabbed really exist? What secrets are hidden in this seemingly peaceful community? Is it her own demons that Anna needs to overcome, or is it the danger hiding in the shadows that is closing in on her…

As a typical work of suspense, in addition to using the classic mechanism of “peeking through the back window”, “The Woman in the Window” also mobilizes the reader’s excitement through constant reversals. In this work, any seemingly taken-for-granted preconceptions” become a trap. The only way for readers to be invincible is perhaps not to speculate on the unspecified details of the work. But it is almost impossible. We are used to imagining the motives and labeling a character as “good guy” or “bad guy” as soon as he appears. But in this work, all preconceptions and labels are destroyed. The truth and life are reshaped without the existence of the premise.

A good mystery novel is a carrot of “guess who I am” hanging in front of your eyes. It will make you think you are infinitely close to the truth, but never getting to the truth. The Woman in the Window doesn’t let you see the light until the last moment. For those who like voyeurism, it is good to play this game of “Guess Who” with Anna.

5. The Wife Between Us

Vanessa’s perfect marriage is forced to come to an end. She has to move out of her big, opulent house on the Upper East Side with a few boxes of clothes, leaving her handsome and considerate husband behind and returning to the cramped apartment she shares with her aunt on the Upper West Side. She had an unhappy childhood. Her mother was mentally ill, and with the trauma left by her family of origin, she tried to turn her fate around through marriage. But now, her husband Richard has abandoned her for another woman. And now her only goal in life is – to stop her replacement from marrying Richard.

However, her efforts seem to be in vain. For her, life has been written in the word “failure” – no children, no money, no friends. Only a psychotherapist was willing to listen to her. Whenever she walked into her therapy room, she felt a great sense of peace. Until one day, Vanessa overheard the same scars on the psychotherapist’s body as she did, left by the same person.

The Wife Between Us is a twisted and complex psychological thriller. It’s a story of marriage, friendship, betrayal, manipulation, obsession, and more. The author creates a tense, depressing atmosphere at the beginning, with stalking and nightmares. And then the story follows the alternating monologues of Nellie and Vanessa. When you finish the first two parts you will feel that the author has written a wonderful story. I can’t help but applaud it anyway, as I vaguely see the end of the mystery.

From one event that is remembered, amplified, “misremembered” and “reckoned”, we see the agitation of the two female protagonists in different spaces. Whether they are active or passive defense? They seem to be secretly spied by a pair of eyes hidden in the shadows and driven by a pair of hands hidden behind the curtain. And then through the reactions of the surrounding people, dialogue, revealing the male protagonist’s anomaly, unusual care and thoughtfulness, but gradually rendered the atmosphere of slaughter and terror.

The author uses a lot of details to advance the story, and when the truth is clear at the end, it’s like Hitchcock’s “time bomb in the room” theory, with even greater shock and emotion! Easy to read, but the writing is extremely complex thinking. The more you guess the author’s next step, the more you have to praise her awesome. She put all the thoughts, all the design in front of you in a step-by-step manner. But you can not skip any line, in advance of more than one page of the book.

6. The Outsider

In the small town of Flint, Oklahoma, Detective Ralph Anderson arrested Terry Maitland, a popular teacher and Little League baseball coach, in front of a crowd, accusing him of raping and killing a boy and cutting up his body. The district attorney tells Anderson to break Maitland’s alibi and turn what would have been a protracted court battle into a straightforward case with a straightforward plot.

Instead, Anderson makes an unexpected discovery. Not only do multiple witnesses claim Maitland was out of town when the murders occurred, but security footage confirms it. With the help of private investigator Holly Gibney, Anderson begins to dig deeper into the case. Clues lead the two to the town of Marysville, Texas, with the assistance of Yune Sablo, a Mexican police officer, and Lovie Ann Bolton, a white woman living in a predominantly Latino town. They find themselves faced with a real monster threat…

The Outsider’s story stands on a point of easy contradiction and suspense: a man cannot have a diversion, cannot exist in two places at the same moment. But what the detective does not expect is that the truth takes him to a world beyond nature, even incomprehensible. The Outsider is a dual experience of suspense + horror: opening with a suspenseful case, this time with a detective wrapped in a real folklore!

This time, under the wraps of the detective theme, the author writes about the Mexican ectoplasmic monsters, a real folklore! The structure and clues of the detective story are perfectly organized, and the rhythm of pulling back the layers brings the reader a richly layered suspense. With a small climax on every few pages, it sucks people into the book and read without stopping. The suspenseful case in this book is a big and complicated affair. But the author takes it lightly and arranges the material particularly perfectly. There is also author King’s best sense of humor, no matter what the situation is, he writes sentences that are close to secular life and make people laugh, laughter really makes everything better ah.

7. Sharp Objects

“Wind Gap is Camille’s hometown, but she’s a bit repulsed by the place. After the murder of a girl and the disappearance of a girl in “Wind Gap”, she is sent by her boss to cover the story and try to make a big news. So she returned to the town and lived at home. Her mother, who had always been distant from her, reluctantly let her stay. The mother and stepfather also have a younger sister, who is in her teens and plays the role of a doll-like good girl at home. But is a typical socialite among her peers. The heroine has been away from home for many years. The two half-sisters did not even know each other before this meeting.

Soon after, the missing girl is confirmed to have been killed. This means that the town is hiding a serial killer. In order to get more details for her story, the heroine travels around her hometown, trying to get more information from the police and her old friends. One of the police officers is an outsider and is ostracized by other police officers and residents. While the heroine, although born here, is also an outsider in spirit. Both are investigating the same case, so they get closer and closer…

This is a psychological related thriller. The story is more about her and her relationship with her mother and half-sister than it is about the girl’s murder. Throughout the story, there are many people who enter Camille’s confused mind. As Camille struggles with her past and her inner self to avoid falling into the spiral of despair brought on by her deranged mother. The story is full of all sorts of perverse behavior. Sex with teenagers, drugs, alcohol, bullying, self-harm, child abuse and murder. But in the end, Camille perseveres to find the real killer and make peace with her own past.

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, was shortlisted for the Alan Poe Award after its publication and won the British Dagger Award. As a psychological thriller, the author does not spend a lot of time describing the characters’ actions, and there is not much of a core story. Most of the time, the reader watches Camille fall into a buried emotional spiral. But once the reader gets used to the author’s style of writing, the story is strangely gripping. The author does an excellent job of describing the setting and characters. A notable writing feature is her use of metaphors in almost every other paragraph, a rhetorical device that provides a way to describe things poetically.

8. Gone girl

Nick and Amy are the perfect couple in the eyes of others. Amy uses a diary every day to record their married life, and every wedding anniversary will be carefully set up full of surprises “scavenger hunt”, so as to maintain the intimate relationship with her husband. But life is inexorably more and more bland as water… In their fifth wedding anniversary On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, the lady of the house disappeared! Nick confessed deeply through the media and frantically searched for the vanished lover. However, Amy’s a diary, word for word refers directly to Nick is the real killer. At once, everyone began to re-examine the pillow man.

For those who are in the midst of marriage and love, this book may make them think more deeply. Because it reveals the content of marriage and love and interprets it from the perspective of both husband and wife, which is really a good teaching material. But she is not limited to the traditional didactic or Chicken Soup for the Soul type of reading. The feeling is like walking on a beach in western Mexico for a long time and you are about to be dried into a fire, not a long-lost rain. The latter will only let you get a moment of pleasure. While the former, you will burn the whole. At the end the kind of shock and panic will be more impressive to you.

I don’t want to praise the author’s wordplay here anymore. Even if the author writes a novel about a housewife’s home life from beginning to end, I think there will still be many people who will defiantly play the “buy, read, and praise” trilogy, which ultimately lies in the author’s ability to manage words. Gillian Flynn is one of them.

9. Before I go to sleep

For 20 years, Clarice’s memory only lasts a day. Every morning she wakes up and completely forgets what happened yesterday. Including who she is, what she has been, and even who she loves. Clarice’s husband, named Ben, was her only anchor in the world. Everything about her life could only be told by Ben. But with the help of Dr. Nash, Clarice finds her diary and finds the first page that reads, “Don’t trust Ben”. Chris can only hide from the man who calls himself “Ben”, secretly regain their own life path, step by step closer to the truth.

The best part of the book is that the main body of the book is consist of Chrissie’s diary, which precisely contains the certainty of the entity and the uncertainty of the content. The reader is sympathetic to the Chrissie in the diary. But is always suspicious of the Chrissie, fearing that he will fall into the trap woven by memory at the end of the song. The day the diary ends. We wake up from the nightmare and discover that this contradiction between reality and pseudo-reality not only lies in the heart of Clarice in the book, but also silently takes root in our hearts.

By the end of the book, the invisible barrier between the hippocampus and the diary in Chris’s brain finally disappears. The lost memories and redeemed memories are put together into a complete puzzle. The interesting thing is that contrary to the title of the book, the strength that makes Chris persevere to the end is not the phrase “don’t trust anyone”, but precisely because her heart is always haunted by the bond between those who love her and those she loves. This trust finally breaks through all the false appearances and fearlessly leads her to the real memories.

10. The Hound of the Baskervilles

On a beautiful morning in September, Sherlock Holmes received a visit letter from a doctor named James Mottledale. The letter tells the story of how Hugo Baskerville, the ancestor of the Baskerville family more than a hundred years ago, committed a crime and eventually got himself killed under the teeth of the legendary fierce Baskerville Hound. Since then, the Baskerville family is under the shadow of the crimes committed by their ancestors. The family patriarch’s heirs have died in a strange and horrible way.

At first Holmes was not fascinated by the story of Dr. Mottmann and thought it was just an interesting legend. But as Dr. Mortimer gradually tells Holmes about the suspicions surrounding the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, Holmes decides to intervene in the case. Because he realizes that it concerns not only the true cause of the death of the late Earl Charles, but also the life of the next heir to the Baskerville estate. Even more nerve-wracking is that the man behind the curtain seems to have detected Holmes’ investigation…

This book comes from the famous novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, even those who do not like mystery novels know his name. The Hound of the Baskervilles” is one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s proud full-length works, which can be called the masterpiece of Sherlock Holmes’ mystery collection. The breakthrough of this one is mainly in the following three points:

1. Unlike Doyle’s previous works, The Hound of the Baskervilles is narrated by Dr. Watson. As a close associate of Holmes, he becomes an important participant in the case. Much of the novel is presented in the form of Watson’s memoirs, which means that Watson is an extra-story narrator, meaning that he “has a higher level of authority over the story he is narrating. Although not the same as an omniscient narrator, when he tells the story, he knows the events by heart. But when Watson tells the story, he intentionally omits some of the facts and does not reveal the truth until the end. By setting up suspense, this design delays the reader’s satisfaction of knowing the truth and encourages him to continue reading.

2. This time the case, the detection time is very long, leaving the author to create a suspenseful atmosphere, and also to create a very successful, dangerous swamps. Terrible fugitives, mysterious giant dogs, etc. are to this remote small mountain village shrouded in a layer of terror.

3. The characters of this case are successfully shaped, as many as seven suspects, and each suspect has a different personality, but also have their own branch, so that the reader has had enough in the addiction of guessing the killer. And in the case of the investigation, Dr. Watson is more with our normal reader thinking in the problem, in the set-up and full of drama. In short, this is a qualified detective novel that people will not be disappointed to read.

Enjoyed this 10 books like Magpie Murders review? Then be sure to check out our other book review of 8 Books like The Poppy War.