'I think that is actually quite a good rule. I could do almost anything with the stories I was adapting except change the murder and the solution,' said Horowitz. 'Whenever I wrote for ' Agatha Christie's Poirot,'. Maintaining the 'Magpie Murders' main title mystery: The clues, the murders and a bird masqueradeĪnthony Horowitz, who had written the original novel 'Magpie Murders,' spoke to Salon about maintaining that specific ending when adapting his book for television. and that leaves a four-letter word – one of the worst, one of the most offensive in the English language.' ' Susan helpfully spells out, albeit incompletely, '. His plan? With the imminent publication of his final book titled 'Magpie Murders,' eagle-eyed readers would realize that unscrambling the first letters for each novel in the detective series would spell out 'AN ANAGRAM.' In turn, that would lead readers to unscrambling the ultimate anagram of all, the name of Alan's famed detective, ATTICUS PUND. 'The more successful he was, the more miserable he became.'īook editor Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville) provides this insight into the mindset of bestselling mystery author Alan Conway's (Conleth Hill) actions in the finale of 'Magpie Murders.' After receiving a fatal diagnosis, the snooty Alan schemes to forever taint the legacy of his popular Atticus Pünd detective novels, believing them to be frivolous pap and not 'important' writing.

The following contains the spoilery solution to the dual mysteries in 'Magpie Murders.'

Atticus pund