54 pages • 1 hour read
Anthony HorowitzMagpie Murders
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Corruption of Small Towns
One of the significant themes throughout the novel is the corruption and evil lurking just below the surface of even small, pastoral towns. Although from the outside the setting of Magpie Murders looks like a sleepy, idyllic English village, there are as many dark, complicated secrets as there as anywhere else is. Aside from the murders that form the centerpiece of the novel-within-a-novel, there are also a variety of other misdeeds—adultery, theft, deceit, and cruelty. The villagers hold close to many of these secrets, but they all come to light under Atticus’s discerning eye.
The corruption inherent even in such a charming, beguiling setting forces the reader to reckon with the fact that there are seedy and unsavory elements present in even the smallest and most innocent communities. In fact, as some of the characters in the novel suggest, due to their size and seclusion from the outside world, small communities may present quite fertile grounds for evil to spawn. The novel suggests that everyone has secrets—from the lowest members of the community to the rich and powerful and everywhere in between.
This corruption and unsavory underbelly mirrors in the main events of the novel, as Susan struggles to uncover the real story behind Alan Conway’s unexpected death. The deeper she digs into the circumstances surrounding his life and writing, the more secrets she uncovers. Ultimately, Susan finds that people held closest are still capable of acts of betrayal and violence.
Detective Stories as a Reflection of Reality
Throughout the novel, Susan ruminates on the way that detective stories reflect and distort human nature and reality. Having edited all of Alan Conway’s novels, and an avid mystery reader since childhood, Susan is keenly aware of what makes this genre attractive. Unlike other forms of fiction, in which readers act as spectators while events happen around them, Susan posits that mystery novels ask the reader to work alongside the detective in order to solve the murder and reach a satisfying conclusion. Detective novels are an opportunity to peel back the surface of everyday life and expose the secrets underneath. Detective novels prize the truth and are in many ways a simpler, more pure kind of fiction.
Despite the ways in which they reflect human nature and mirror real life, however, mystery novels depart from the real world in several respects. While real life may be full of uncertainty, doubt, and disappointment, mystery novels usually leave the reader with a satisfying conclusion. Unlike the real world, in which questions may never be answered, by the end of a mystery novel the conflict is resolved and killer and their motives identified.
Throughout the novel, Conway draws attention to this contrast by placing a novel within a novel, encouraging readers to immerse themselves in two different fictional worlds that mirror both each other and the real world. In both cases, the readers are tasked just as much as the characters with the job of finding out who is guilty and who is innocent, who has committed a crime and who is merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Susan, readers play the role of amateur detective throughout the book.
Disappointment and Unrealized Dreams
Throughout the novel, many characters never realize their long-held dreams. While Alan Conway dreamed of becoming a beloved and respected author of literary fiction, he found himself trapped and coerced into writing bestselling mystery novels. Although he makes a fortune writing these books, he is dissatisfied with them and unhappy with the way his career has progressed. He even works to actively discredit his own work, embedding sloppy clues and offensive anagrams in his books. Alan dies a successful author, but he is never able to publish the works that are meaningful to him. Throughout his life, he resents the fact that his success has eclipsed any chance of realizing his true dream.
Others in the novel are also unable to pursue the things that really matter to them. Susan professes happiness with her life but feels a sense of guilt and unease that she may not really have accomplished all that much. She is unsure what she wants in terms of her career and her relationships. Similarly, Alan’s ex-wife and child are distressed by his abrupt departure, and they subsequently must construct lives that are much different than they planned.
In Alan’s novel, many of the characters also fight for dreams that remain unrealized. While the Blakiston family moved to Pye Hall to start over and make a future for themselves, they tragedy besets them. Clarissa dreams of inheriting her family’s estate but is cut out of the will by her twin brother and lives her life in his shadow. While Robert and Joy plan to be married and start a new life in a new place together, they are unable to escape the past. In all of these situations, reality grinds down all of the characters with dreams and plans and they are unable to enact the futures that they want for themselves. Ultimately, the novel seems to suggest that many things in life are outside of human control.
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By Anthony Horowitz
