Marble Hall Murders author Anthony Horowitz: ‘I could commit the perfect murder’
Best-selling crime writer Anthony Horowitz reckons he would make a terrible detective as he never spots the clues, but he could commit the perfect murder - if he didn’t have such a horror for violence in real life.
Famous for creating the TV series Midsomer Murders, teen spy series Alex Rider, continuation novels for Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, the best-selling Hawthorne series in which he appears as the former detective’s hapless sidekick, and, most recently, BBC drama Magpie Murders and its sequel Moonflower Murders with a third on the way, Anthony knows a thing or two about killing.
“I would be a good murderer,” he says. “I think, apart from my dislike of violence, I could probably dream up the perfect crime because that’s what I do for a living. But I don’t think I would be able to solve a crime like one of the detectives.”
He hastens to add: “I'm a very moralistic person and I've never yet met anybody I would want to murder. I just know how to do it, that's all.”
He is coming to the Cambridge Literary Festival to discuss the launch of his new crime novel, Marble Hall Murders. It will be the third in his latest series, which follows literary editor and accidental sleuth Susan Ryeland and is being adapted for television starring Lesley Manville.
Anthony says: “I love writing these stories, I love tricking the audience. I do love dangling the clues. And when I finish writing, I don’t ask the reader did you enjoy it, but did you guess it? And if the answer is no, but I could have, that's what I want to hear.
“Sometimes people do guess (the murderer). And I don't mind too much. It's fair if the clues are there, and the writers have stayed there with the reader. I'm not, personally, very good at getting murder mysteries. I'm always fooled and, of course, I love being fooled because that is the pleasure of it. I don't want to guess it and I hope that people read my books in the same way.”
In this third story, which follows Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, Susan Ryeland has decided she has had enough of murder.
She’s edited two novels about the famous detective, Atticus Pünd, and both times she’s come close to being killed. Now she’s back in England and she’s been persuaded to work on a third.
The new ‘continuation’ novel is by Eliot Crace, grandson of Miriam Crace, who was the biggest selling children’s author in the world until her death exactly 20 years ago.
Eliot believes that Miriam was deliberately poisoned. And when he tells Susan that he has hidden the identity of Miriam’s killer inside his book, Susan knows she’s in trouble once again.
As Susan works on Pünd’s Last Case, a story set in an exotic villa in the South of France, she uncovers more and more parallels between the past and the present, the fictional and the real world – until suddenly she finds that she has become a target herself.
Anthony explains this novel came into being because his leading actress, Lesley Manville, asked if there would be another book.
“She had enjoyed it so much,” he explains. “So I had to adapt a novel which didn't exist because I hadn’t written the third novel. I went home and began to think, what am I going to write about? And it suddenly occurred to me that the area of literary estates is a really fascinating one. What's it like to be the son, the daughter, the grandson, the granddaughter, the nephew, the niece of a Christie or Ian Fleming or Roald Dahl or Arthur Conan Doyle?
“As it happens, I have worked with all four of those estates, so I know what I'm talking about. It just seems to me an area rich in possibilities.”
Having written ‘continuity’ novels, meaning books in the voice of a popular dead author with the blessing of the author’s estate, Anthony understood the importance of reputation for those families.
“I've only had happy experiences with the estates that I've worked with,” he says.
“But I do know that they can be very tricky customers, too. In this case, the continuity writer in book, Eliot Crace, is the grandson of a sort of an Enid Blyton-style children's author who sold millions of books, and although she is not based on anybody in particular, some of the horrors of her behaviour, and secrets it is safer to hide, you might say, are inspired by real life.
“Enid Blyton had all sorts of things said about her after her death, Roland Dahl of course, was famous for his anti-semitism. And I think it's just interesting when people have created great books that you try to keep their names pristine and their reputation unsullied, and that often leads you into having to tiptoe around the truth.
“I do want to make it quite clear that this is not inspired by anybody I've ever worked with. I mean, I've had happy experiences with the people I have dealt with, but the fact of the matter is, there's an awful lot of money attached to the name of a famous writer. And in the book, Netflix has just done a $200million deal with the estate of Miriam Crace. And so nobody wants anything bad said about her or anything that might upset her particularly, as in this instance, she's a children's author. She’s much loved, writing characters who are 100 per cent good and pure. For somebody like me, it's a gift. It's a natural arena to write a murder mystery.”
Marble Hall Murders once again features a book within a book and Susan must search for clues in the continuation novel that features the character Atticus Pünd, who has become her mental sidekick.
Anthony said: “In the novels, he lives entirely in the world of the books, but in the television shows, the two worlds happen side by side. That is today, the real world, and the fictitious Golden Age world of Atticus Pünd. There’s a sort of bridge between the two, and Susan occasionally crosses that bridge and Atticus becomes a sort of her conscience, maybe he's a ghost, maybe he's just her imagination, but he's always her friend and mentor.”
However, Anthony’s advice is to be wary of any advice that a sidekick, such as Atticus, may give in a murder mystery - because their role is usually to get things wrong and put the reader off the scent.
“Sadly, I’m not sure that Atticus Pünd has ever helped her at all,” he says.
“He doesn't have to be wrong, but the sidekick is a very useful person to point the reader in the wrong direction. If a sidekick asks a question about, I don't know, a broken vase, it's because he hasn't noticed the fingerprint that's on the window. So he misdirects. It's a very useful thing. The detective sees what he or she needs to see to solve the crime, whereas the sidekick is much more in the dark. If you read the Hawthorne series in which I myself am the sidekick, the whole point of those books is that, instead of being the cleverest person in the book, the author, I'm the sort of the least clever person, which is the sidekick, and that's what makes those books fun to write.”
Anthony explains that while he doesn't have strict rules for his books, he does stick to certain guidelines.
“I think writing and rules are sort of opposites of each other,” he says. “The whole point of writing is you write what you want to write. You write what you believe people enjoy reading, and you do what the hell you like really. However, I do have some sort of guidance system. I don't like violent murders. I generally try to avoid, you know, the obvious things. I don't like killing children in books. I find that unsettling. I think I'm trying to entertain people. I don't want my books to be nightmarish, dark, unpleasant or political. That, I think, is my big guiding light.
“I never, ever call my books cosy crime. I don't believe the crime can be cosy. Killing is something you don't do in a cosy manner. It's always a brutal act. But I think Golden Age crime, which tends to be more intellectual and less visceral, is the area where I feel most comfortable.”
Anthony Horowitz will be discussing his writing life at a literary lunch at the University Arms Hotel for the Cambridge Literary Festival on Friday, 25 April. Visit https://www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/events/literary-lunch-anthony-horowitz-marble-hall-murders/ for tickets, priced £46, including a two-course meal with a glass of wine.
