Marble Hall Murders: A Guest Post by Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz brought along a few old friends. Three deaths, two detectives and one puzzling manuscript — this mystery is a joy to solve. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Anthony Horowitz on writing Marble Hall Murders.

Marble Hall Murders is the third book in a series that has taken me an incredible nine years to write.

It began with Midsomer Murders, which introduced Susan Ryeland, a London editor struggling to solve the murder of her least favourite author and discovering that the solution is concealed in his last book. This created the “book inside a book” format and the idea of building a bridge between two worlds – fiction and reality – which has been the hallmark of the series. My problem was that although the thought amused me, it was also extremely complicated and I had to work hard to make sure that the story would be easy to follow and that my readers would be able to enjoy the tangled plot without wondering what on earth was going on. It was five long years of thinking and planning before I even wrote the first chapter.

The book was a success and was made into a television series by Masterpiece in the USA, partnering with the BBC in England, and starring the wonderful Lesley Manville as Susan. It was also, incidentally, produced by my wife, Jill Green.

I mention this because it was she who persuaded me to write a sequel. I’d always thought of Magpie as a one-off…after all, it had consumed quite a chunk of my life. But in order to raise the finance to make the show, she had to persuade the television companies that I had another trick up my sleeve and so, a little reluctantly, I began work on Moonflower Murders.

I didn’t need to worry. Having created the format, the second book was much less challenging and only took me fifteen months from start to finish. I enjoyed creating a murder story that was partly based on Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro. And it was also fun returning to Susan Ryeland, writing in her voice, exploring what had happened to her in Crete where she had moved with her boyfriend, Andreas, and why she had to come back.

We went on to shoot Moonflower in London and Crete and it was on the last day of filming that Lesley Manville suddenly announced that she would like to return a third time. When a major star lends their name to a project, it’s crazy to say no – but there was a problem. Lesley is one of the busiest actors on the planet and she only had one window in her schedule – in a year’s time. That meant I would have to write a 600-page novel and then adapt it into six episodes in just twelve months. Impossible!

Well, Marble Hall Murders was the result and I’m still not quite sure how I did it. I remember walking around in a state of panic for about six weeks. I had to work out, what the the book was going to be about. What was its milieu? To me, this is always the most important question. I know that someone is going to kill someone else – but why? Who are they? What is their world?

And then an idea struck me. Estates! When a famous author dies, their family often has to look after their estates – the rights to their books, new publications, biographies, films. But what if that author had been a complete monster and had made their life a misery? In that moment, Miriam Crace was born and I absolutely loved writing about her and her unfortunate descendants. In many ways, I think it’s the best of the trilogy but of course that’s for you to decide. I hope you enjoy it.