What is the title of your latest release?
MARBLE HALL MURDERS
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
An editor, working on a new mystery novel, discovers that a clue to a real murder that took place twenty years ago is concealed inside the text. Can she unravel it before the killer strikes again?
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I saw palm trees, sunshine and white linen suits in my mind’s eye so I decided to set it – partly – in the South of France.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. I love writing about Susan Ryeland, the editor – and she’s also played by Lesley Manville on TV who’s become a real-life friend.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Smart, feisty, humorous.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
This is the third book in a series, and I learned that there were actually a lot of variations on the original idea.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I write in a cyclical way. After about 50% of the book, I go back to the start and edit. When I reach 75%, I do the same. Finally, when the book is finished, I go back to the start for a third and final edit.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Chocolate digestive biscuits and green tea.
Describe your writing space/office!
A large, bright room on the first floor. Old sofas so my dog can sit on them. About 1,000 books, many of them by me but others connected to my research. Toys and Tintin figurines.
Who is an author you admire?
There are so many – but Charles Dickens has always been my inspiration.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It showed me heights I would never achieve.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was ten years old and at a horrible boarding school. My teachers told me I was useless. I had no friends. Then I discovered the school library…
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Nineteenth century literary classics from Dickens to Hardy and Jane Austen.
What’s your favorite movie?
The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed. I must have seen it fifty times.
Susan Ryeland #3
Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from Anthony Horowitz featuring detective Atticus Pünd and editor Susan Ryeland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.
Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel and her Greek boyfriend, Andreas, in search of a new life back in England.
Freelancing for a London publisher, she's given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd’s Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children’s author Miriam Crace who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced she was murdered—by poison.
To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring.
The more Susan reads, the clearer it becomes that Eliot has deliberately concealed clues about his grandmother’s death inside the book.
Desperately, Susan tries to prevent Eliot from putting himself in harm’s way—but his behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic. Another murder follows . . . and suddenly Susan finds herself to be the number one suspect.
Once again, the real and the fictional worlds have become dangerously entangled. And if Susan doesn't solve the mystery of Pünd’s Last Case, she could well be its next victim.
Mystery Amateur Sleuth [Harper, On Sale: May 13, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063305700 / eISBN: 9780063305717]
Anthony Horowitz is one of the most prolific and successful writers working in the UK – and is unique for working across so many media. Anthony is a born polymath; juggling writing books, TV series, films, plays and journalism.
Anthony was awarded an OBE for his services to literature in January 2014.
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