Author Anthony Horowitz Brings His Dual Detectives Back to PBS in ‘Moonflower Murders’
One of the most distinctive pairings in detective fiction returns in Moonflower Murders, the sequel to creator Anthony Horowitz’s 2022 series Magpie Murders. Both PBS shows are based on Horowitz’s own novels, which are an inventive combination of two types of mysteries.
Lesley Manville returns as book editor Susan Ryeland, who worked with mean-spirited author Alan Conway (Conleth Hall) on his novels featuring the Hercule Poirot-like detective Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan). The show once again interweaves two mysteries: one investigated by Susan in the “real” world, and another investigated by Pünd in one of Conway’s novels. The two mysteries are connected by Conway, who incorporates his own experiences in his novel, revealing potential clues that aid Susan in her investigation.
In Magpie Murders, Susan was investigating the death of Conway himself, while also searching for the missing final chapter of the final Pünd novel. The stakes in Moonflower Murders are less personal, although Susan still puts her full efforts into looking for a missing woman whose disappearance may be tied to an earlier Pünd novel. She also deals with some drama in her relationships with her Greek boyfriend Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis) and her sister Katie (Claire Rushbrook), but it’s fairly minor compared to what she faced in the first season.
As the season begins, Susan has given up her job in publishing to move to Crete to run a hotel with Andreas, but the hospitality industry is clearly the wrong fit for her. When Lawrence and Pauline Treherne (Adrian Rawlins and Pooky Quesnel), owners of a hotel in England, track her down and offer her a substantial amount of money to help find their missing daughter Cecily (Amy Griffiths), she jumps at the chance to get away and immerse herself in a new project.
The Trehernes hire Susan because Cecily claimed that she found key information related to a previous murder at their hotel in the pages of a Pünd novel. Eight years earlier, hotel guest Frank Parris (Mark Gatiss) was murdered on the night of Cecily’s wedding to Aiden MacNeil (Will Tudor), and a hotel employee was convicted of the crime. Thanks to what she apparently read in Conway’s book, though, Cecily became convinced that the real killer was someone else, but before she could reveal the truth, she disappeared.
In order to find out what Cecily knew, Susan dives back into reading Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, and both mysteries play out over the course of the six-episode season. In the book, set in 1954, Pünd is investigating the murder of a famous retired actress who was also the owner of a hotel. As in Magpie Murders, many of the characters in the Pünd story are played by the same actors who play characters in Susan’s story, since Conway used real people as his inspiration. There’s less of a direct connection between the two mysteries than there was in Magpie Murders, but the juxtapositions still allow Horowitz to hint at darker secrets that people are hiding from Susan.
There are also flashbacks to the time that Conway spent writing Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, which lets Hall return as the amusingly misanthropic writer, along with a few other characters from Magpie Murders. That gives the show a sense of continuity and forward momentum, even though Pünd himself has gone backward a bit, since his story takes place earlier in his fictional history. He still shows up for playful interactions with Susan, and the dynamic between the two detectives is one of the show’s most entertaining elements.
Horowitz is skilled at crafting mysteries in both modern and vintage modes, and both cases end with the detectives gathering all their suspects in a room before unveiling the solution, Poirot-style. There’s less literary meta-commentary this time, since the main story is set in the hotel business rather than the publishing world, but Horowitz still makes some wry observations about mystery novels and publishing trends. Manville’s warm, empathetic performance ensures that Moonflower Murders isn’t just an exercise in snark, and both mysteries are engaging and surprising on their own terms.
It may be a stretch to continue connecting Pünd novels to murders for Susan to solve, but with a third book in Horowitz’s series set for release next year, there’s likely to be at least one more crime hidden in a Pünd adventure. The clever approach to mystery storytelling that Horowitz brings to Moonflower Murders would be welcome back on TV, too.
Discover the Book
Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is living the good life. She is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend Andreas. It should be everything she’s always wanted. But is it? She’s exhausted with the responsibilities of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, and truth be told she’s beginning to miss London.
And then the Trehearnes come to stay. The strange and mysterious story they tell, about an unfortunate murder that took place on the same day and in the same hotel in which their daughter was married—a picturesque inn on the Suffolk coast named Farlingaye Hall—fascinates Susan and piques her editor’s instincts.
One of her former writers, the late Alan Conway, author of the fictional Magpie Murders, knew the murder victim—an advertising executive named Frank Parris—and once visited Farlingaye Hall. Conway based the third book in his detective series, Atticus Pund Takes the Cake, on that very crime.
The Trehearne’s, daughter, Cecily, read Conway’s mystery and believed the book proves that the man convicted of Parris’s murder—a Romanian immigrant who was the hotel’s handyman—is innocent. When the Trehearnes reveal that Cecily is now missing, Susan knows that she must return to England and find out what really happened.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He’s the former film editor of Las Vegas Weekly and the former TV comedies guide for About.com. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, CBR, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.