Again a tough choice. My thee favorite mystery writers came out with 4 books this year. So I will shoutout to them all, but I could only pick one to win.

The Winner: Moonflower Murders

The runners-up shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who follows along. Louise Penny’s All the Devils Are Here showed us a lot more of Armand Gamache’s personal life than usual, which made for an amazing story. And Donna Andrews brought out 2 cozies about my favorite crazy family, Meg and the Langslows. The Falcon Always Wings Twice, a murder at a Renaissance Faire, and her Christmas cozy, The Gift of the Magpie, where they try to help out neighbors for the holidays.

When editor Susan Ryeland left publishing behind to move to Crete to open up a small B&B with her fiancé, she expected it to be forever. She thought she would be happy there, away from London, away from editing, and away from Alan Conway. Although Alan had been their most popular author, he’d been a pain to work with. When he’d died, and she had figured out how much he’d resented his creation, private detective Atticus Pund, she was thrilled to walk away and put that entire part of her life behind her.

And then the Trehearnes showed up at her tiny hotel with a story about a murder, their daughter Cecily’s disappearance, and one of Alan Conway’s Atticus Pund novels.

The murder had taken place several years before, at the Trehearnes’ hotel. A guest had been killed by their handyman, a Romanian ex-con who was now serving a life sentence in prison. Alan Conway had heard about the murder and checked in to the hotel to research it for a book. After looking at the case, Conway realized that there had been a terrible mistake. The wrong man was in prison for the murder, and Alan had figured out who the killer was. But instead of going to the police with what he knew, he chose to divulge the killer through a series of clues placed in his novel Atticus Pund Takes the Case.

The Trehearnes had come looking for Susan because their daughter had read Alan’s book, realized who the killer was, and then promptly disappeared. Susan had been the editor of Alan’s Atticus Pund books, sp she knew them better than anyone. The Trehearnes had come to her to ask for her help. Maybe if she came back to England, to their hotel, then she could help find out what happened to Cecily. Maybe Susan could see what Cecily had seen in Alan’s book and figure out where she went.

Susan had gotten restless in Crete, struggling to keep the hotel afloat and missing her former life. If she said yes, the funds would certainly come in handy. But she would have to deal again with Alan’s infuriating puzzles. Is she willing to risk her new, safe life for this adventure? Could it also mean she was risking her own life?

Anthony Horowitz once again plunges us into the world of the late writer Alan Conway and his editor Susan Ryeland. In Moonflower Murders, as Susan investigates Cecily’s disappearance, and also the murder that had happened years earlier at the hotel, she finds that she is the only one who can draw out all the clues that the killer—and Alan—left behind.

Like Magpie Murders before, Moonflower Murders once again contains the entire text of an Atticus Pund novel (how does Anthony Horowitz write so much, so beautifully, so fast?!), and the mystery contained in Atticus Pund Takes the Case and the brilliance of those investigating shocked me with one revealing surprise after another as the pieces snap together. Everything is there, laid out for all to see, but I find that I keep getting distracted from the details and they slip through my hands until later, when they come back to slap me in the face.

Horowitz’s delightful mystery-within-a-mystery series just keeps knocking me off my feet. My only disappointment with these books is knowing that that there are a limited number of Atticus Pund books to draw from. Otherwise, I find these books simply breathtaking, and I highly recommend them to all mystery fans.

Egalleys for Moonflower Murders were provided by Harper through Edelweiss, with many thanks.