Close to Death Anthony Horowitz (2024) Novelist Horowitz is a master of the metafictional mystery, in which he deliberately draws attention to the artificiality of his story, separating the mystery itself from his own act of creating the mystery. (For my fuller discussions of Horowitz’s metafiction, click here and here.) In Close to Death, there’s a very traditional Agatha-Christie-style murder: London financier Giles Kenworthy is shot through the neck with a crossbow at his home in a small, exclusive gated community, Riverview Close. All the other residents of the Close come under suspicion of committing the crime. Interleaved with this murder story is another story—that of an author called Anthony Horowitz who is trying to write a novel based on the investigation of the Kenworthy murder by a secretive private detective named Daniel Hawthorne. Readers have to follow both intricate layers until the two collide in a joint solution. Horowitz (the real-life person!) is devilishly clever, his prose is slick, and his mysteries are ingenious.
Still Life Louise Penny (2005) Although I swore off reading more of Louise Penny’s mysteries back in 2017, I recently went back to this debut novel in her series of 19 novels centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Québec’s homicide unit. (Sentence fragments in later novels of the series had driven me batty, but Still Life has fewer of these.) I did find some rough edges in Still Life—for example, the sometimes inscrutable dialogue and the unresolved issue of an insubordinate junior officer. However, the descriptions of small-town Québec are superb, the plot is sophisticated, and Gamache is an engaging lead. I understand why Louise Penny has such a faithful following among mystery readers.
Eleven Pipers Piping C C Benison (2012) Each year in January, the bagpipe-playing males of the fictional English village of Thornford Regis commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns with a special catered supper. The new vicar at the local St Nicholas Church, named (I kid you not) Tom Christmas, is obliged to say a prayer at this event, though he can’t abide either bagpipe music or haggis. When a death occurs after the meal, Father Christmas is pulled into the investigation, and we’re off and running with a twisty-turny, red-herring-laden classic British mystery. The roster of characters is large (consult the chart at the front of the book); the British slang is laid on heavy (although the author is Canadian); and the incidence of questionable paternity is frequent. But the plot is worked out meticulously, and the characters are quite endearing. This is the second in a series of three related mysteries—the others being, of course, Twelve Drummers Drumming and Ten Lords A-Leaping. C C Benison is the pen name of Douglas Whiteway.