Discover The Best Movies and TV Shows Like Magpie Murders

When famous mystery author Alan Conway is found dead at his Suffolk estate, it seems like a straightforward suicide. However, Susan Ryeland, his long-time editor at Clover Books, suspects foul play, especially since the final manuscript of Conway’s latest novel—featuring his iconic detective, Atticus Pünd—arrived missing its climactic final chapter. If Susan cannot find the missing pages, her publishing house faces financial ruin.As Susan reads the manuscript, the narrative seamlessly intertwines with her real-world investigation. In the fictional 1950s village of Saxby-on-Avon, Pünd investigates the murder of local tyrant Sir Magnus Pye, a case mirroring Conway’s real-life tensions with his neighbors, family, and former lovers. Conway was notoriously misanthropic, embedding thinly veiled, deeply cruel caricatures of the people around him into his books. Consequently, almost everyone in both the fictional village and Conway’s real life had a powerful motive to see him dead.In the real world, Susan delves into Conway’s past, uncovering a web of blackmail, plagiarism, and betrayal. She discovers that Conway stole the core premise of his entire literary career from a desperate colleague years ago. Meanwhile, suspects multiply: Conway’s downtrodden sister, his bitter former lover, a resentful local pub owner, and his anxious young partner. Each of them had access to Conway on the day he died, and each had a secret they feared he would expose in his final, devastating novel.As Susan closes in on the truth, she realizes the missing chapter was never lost in the mail; it was stolen because it contains the undeniable proof of the killer’s identity. The parallels between Pünd’s fictional investigation and Susan’s real-world sleuthing converge brilliantly. Pünd unmasks the murderer in the book through a meticulous deduction of psychological flaws and overlooked clues, prompting Susan to apply the exact same logical rigor to the real suspects surrounding her.Ultimately, Susan unmasks the killer in a dramatic confrontation, proving that greed and self-preservation drove the murder. The culprit, desperate to prevent the publication of the final book—which threatened to ruin their reputation and expose a past crime—pushed Conway to his death and staged it as a suicide. With the mystery solved, the missing chapter is recovered, saving Clover Books. However, the ordeal fundamentally changes Susan, leading her to walk away from the publishing industry entirely, disillusioned by the darkness hiding beneath the glossy surface of fiction and reality.