Moonflower Murders–M is for Murder
The PBS series Moonflower Murders, the eponymous mystery series by Anthony Horowitz, is the sequel to the PBS series, “Magpie Murders” (see my January 9, 2023 review). Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville), book-editor-turned-sleuth, is known for having discovered and managed the Atticus Pund mystery series by the late Alan Conway (Conleth Hill of “Game of Thrones”). What now develops is another mystery-within-a-mystery, following the first PBS series. A murder in present day Suffolk, England parallels a fictional murder in the Atticus Pűnd (Tim McMullan) mystery series of the 1950s. The amateur detective Ryeland imagines and bounces ideas off of the fictional detective Pűnd, sometimes having imaginary conversations with him.
Complicated is an understatement as the murder that Ryeland intends to solve is intertwined with the book Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, set in the 1950s and involving the murder of a movie star, Melilssa James, at her English country estate. The Melissa James murder provides the second plotline.
The series name, The Moonflower Murders, tracks the fictional hotel in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case. Melissa James, no longer an A-list movie star, now owns the fictional Moonflower Hotel, named after the moonflower, an evanescent blossom that blooms for only one night. Ryeland also owns a hotel –in Crete–with her partner Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis). She is drafted by Laurence and Pauline Treherne into helping solve an eight-year old murder of a guest, Frank Parris, at their British country inn in Suffolk. He was murdered the day of daughter Cecily’s wedding to Aiden. Now Cecily has disappeared. Cecily’s husband and their eight-year old daughter are grief stricken. There are no suspects. Susan’s client, Alan Conway, knew the victim, stayed at the hotel sometime after the murder, and modeled his mystery after the Moonflower hotel murder of Parris. The Pūnd mystery is the book that Cecily was reading before she disappeared.
Susan Ryeland leaves for Suffolk. Like the Pūnd novel, the parallels are sometimes confounding, as Ryeland hops in and out of time zones with her fictional colleague Pūnd. The viewer has to separate the novel’s murder (of Melissa James) from the present day’s murder (of Parris) jumping from the 1950s to the present day, as the mysteries intertwine with the same actors playing characters in both time zones.
Since many of the supporting actors are double-cast, close attention must be paid to unravel clues and characters’ profiles. Like its predecessor, 2022’s “Magpie Murders,” Moonflower Murders offers dual tracks—Susan as one sleuth, Atticus as another. Other than Manville and McMullan, few actors here have only one part.
Swollen with complexities, the viewer must analyze the parallel plot twists to really understand who killed whom, regardless of convoluted clues. Not an easy pair of mysteries to unravel but for PBS mystery lovers, this one might be less difficult to dissect. For others, Moonflower Mysteries might be a bit laborious and not so entertaining.
Availability: PBS
Note: Another Horowitz murder –also beginning with the letter M, namely, the “Marble Hall Murders”, is in process of being adapted for PBS.