• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 28, 2024

It was a pleasure becoming reacquainted with “Magpie Murders” over the last three Sunday nights on PBS.

Each evening featured two episodes of the six-episode series as a lead-up to the premiere next month -- on September 15 -- of its long-awaited follow-up, “Moonflower Murders.” 

Originating from the UK, “Magpie Murders” premiered in America in October 2022 and established itself as one of the year’s best shows.

This was due to a number of converging factors, especially its two lead characters -- book editor Susan Ryeland and the enigmatic, fictional detective of the 1950s, Atticus Pünd (Lesley Manville and Tim McMullen, above photo).

Also crucial to the show’s success: The story and script by murder-mystery virtuoso Anthony Horowitz, the show’s entire supporting cast and last but not least, Susan Ryeland’s car -- a vintage red MG that is the talk of online MG enthusiasts. They peg the model year as 1968, but there remains some disagreement on that.

Although she drives a super-cool relic from a distant decade, the Ryeland character lives in the present day. 

She finds herself investigating the murder of her small publishing company’s most famous author, a writer of murder mysteries who is (or was) the writer the company depended on for its very survival.

Her investigation is juxtaposed alongside the murder mystery in the author’s most recent book in a mystery series set in the 1950s and featuring the fictional Pünd, billed as “the world’s greatest detective.”

His backstory was revealed in tiny bits throughout the run of “Magpie Murders.”  Among other things, he was revealed to be an enigmatic man of few words who speaks in a vaguely German or Dutch accent. 

In one scene, a concentration camp tattoo is glimpsed on one of his forearms, but little is said about the matter.

In “Magpie Murders,” the editor takes advice and counsel from the detective, who exists only in her mind. At the same time, Pünd is involved in solving the fictional murder mystery crime in the deceased author’s final book.

The two cases run in parallel in the same small English village. Thus, most of the cast members get to play two roles -- one in the present and the other in the past.

“Moonflower Murders” will bring some of the characters back -- most notably Susan Ryeland and Atticus Pünd -- for a new mystery that may or may not originate on the Greek island of Crete.

“Magpie Murders” and “Moonflower Murders” are the first two in a series of Susan Ryeland novels by Horowitz, who is working on a third one.