Magpie Murders: A Novel

From the Globe and Mail–bestselling author of Moriarty, this “spectacularly impressive” (Washington Post) and riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery.

Editor Susan Ryeland has worked with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, so she has no reason to think his latest novel will be much different from his others. Readers love his detective, Atticus Pünd, a celebrated solver of crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s.

But Conway’s latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.

Masterful, clever and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a “doubly devilish” (People) take on vintage English crime fiction, in which the reader becomes the detective.