It opens on a rainy day in London as an editor at a small publishing company is settling in to read a book, also called Magpie Murders. It's clear from the first page of Magpie Murders that something different is afoot in this mystery. I wanted there to be something a little bit more.' I didn't just want people to have the fun and the pleasure of 'Oh, it was the doctor'. How the writers come up with the ideas how these books are formed. a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing. 'I wanted it to be more than just a murder mystery story,' he says.

Still, it took Horowitz a long time to finally write the book. His show Midsomer Murders is a series of classic whodunits, and it was during that show's first season, some 20 years ago, that he got the idea for Magpie Murders. When Horowitz was a teenager, he hitchhiked around the world and read all of Agatha Christie's novels along the way. The final chapter always nails it, closes it down, and you come away with a sense of satisfaction, which I don't think you get in any other sort of book.'Īnthony Horowitz, pictured here in 2016, is also the author of the Alex Rider books, a young adult spy series. 'A whodunit is one of the few types of fiction that dot every i and cross every t, for all fiction is in a way a search for truth,' Horowitz says. It takes a smart detective to sort through all the pieces of the puzzle and put them in the right place, because, of course, in a good whodunit the murder always gets solved. Horowitz says murder is a fast way to get to know someone - their secrets, their habits, their enemies, their friends. His latest foray into fictional crime solving is a whodunit about whodunits: a novel called Magpie Murders. Horowitz has written two Sherlock Holmes novels (with the blessing of Arthur Conan Doyle's estate) and created two popular mystery shows for the BBC, Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders.

'When I said, 'I've got a whole series of terrific murders which take place in that time,' they opened the door.' 'If I had gone to the BBC and said I wanted write about, I don't know, the social history of 1940 to '47, they would have probably said no,' Horowitz explains. during World War II, but that wasn't its selling point. He says everyone is fascinated by murder - just look at Foyle's War, his BBC mystery series. For writer Anthony Horowitz, that's where it all starts. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Magpie Murders Author Anthony Horowitz

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