A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders

A Murder of Magpies is a fun mystery, mostly due to the clever wit of its main character, Samantha Clair who works in the London publishing field. She is juggling the needs of various writers – one who seems to be experimenting with a totally new style and another who may be charged with libel due to a tell all book about the fashion industry.

It really gets interesting, though, when a courier is killed, one of the writers goes missing, and a break-in occurs. Inspector Field enters the picture and Sam’s near-perfect, high energy, solicitor mother joins in, too.  Throughout, I found Sam’s sarcasm and wry perspective to be especially entertaining:

• "... we were going to be brave because we were all too cowardly to be anything else."
• “I briefly wondered what you called a group of editors – a chatter of editors?  I thought … and revised: a pompous of publishers, definitely.”
• “I’d felt as if life was like a play and I’d come in at the interval.  The rest of the audience knew what was going on, while I was the only one who was mystified by the dialogue.  As I got older, I worked out that that’s what everyone thought.”

Pick up Judith Flanders’ A Murder of Magpies if you if you are looking for a light, entertaining mystery. The contemporary London setting and book publishing references are a plus!  Hopefully, we will see more stories involving this amateur sleuth – they would be perfect for PBS’ Masterpiece program.