Words of a Bibliophile

This murder mystery novel containing another full murder mystery novel within it does justice to the classic Agatha Christie tradition to which it pays homage. It starts with an editor reading the manuscript of a novel, Magpie Murders, starring Poirot-inspired detective Atticus Pünd. This book-within-a-book annoyingly cuts off just before Pünd reveals the murderer. It then switches to another mystery concerning the sudden death of the writer of Magpie Murders, before the two story lines converge at the end.

Both of the audio narrators do a good job, although the male narrator's gravelly voice is actually not one I would prefer to listen to for hours on end. It was a bit of a challenge for me to remember all the suspects in not one but two mysteries without having the written word to refer back to, but I somehow managed to do it. Whether I was able to guess the murderers is a whole other question. (I wasn't, but that's the fun of mysteries.) Overall it's a clever and entertaining work of metafiction with interesting discussions on whodunits and why they are so appealing to their fans.