Magpie Murders

I feel conflicted about this one. I am a huge fan of the Golden Age of detective fiction. This was marketed as an homage to it, so I immediately jumped at it, but on the whole it really wasn't. It was more of a critique.

While it raised some good questions about authorship (Can an author ever be truly separated from their work? If the public loves an author's work but they themselves despise it, is it good work? Etc.), I ended up not really liking it.

Here's why:

—There are two interconnected mysteries at play. The first, in the style of old fashioned crime writers, I really enjoyed. The second I found boring and cynical, plus it made fun of anyone who liked the first one.

—It is maybe too self-aware. The author (the real author) comes off as bitter and cynical about the book world, which I found unnecessarily stressful.

—I guessed the culprit in both mysteries. It wasn't very hard. Ordinarily that doesn't bother me much, but it did bother me that...

—The culprits both had weak motives. If you were going to decapitate someone with a sword, or even push someone off a building, you would have to have good motive.

—An author who basically shows off about how much they know about mysteries and the book world for 400 pages should know that. If you are going to come off as snide and all-knowing about a topic (like mystery novels or authorship), be prepared to be held under your own criticism.

Over all, it was like a mash-up of Agatha Christie and House of Blue Leaves, but it didn't pull off the House of Blue Leaves part. In talking about how authors can ruin their own work, it felt like the author did so himself.