Book Review-Magpie Murders By Anthony Horowitz

A book review on the NYT Book Review page had me intrigued. Two stories told in an interwoven fashion could be looked upon as a writing gimmick, but I liked that device; especially if the author is someone who is very good at relating disparate details and pulling them together.

Anthony Horowitz is fantastic at this device. There are so many Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays that I will admit to missing some of them early on in my reading.

Contrary to what I had envisioned, the authors decided to use two large chunks of the book to tell the two stories, I had expected a constant back and forth between the two stories and was a little annoyed that I had to wait for the second story to commence. As it turned out he had a very good reason for doing it this way, and much more sensible.

The first story is that of a murder mystery, a la Agatha Christie. Set in the lovely Somerset countryside and populated by the usual suspects that would feel at home in a Hercule Poirot novel. The main detective is Atticus Pünd, a crime solver who is cut from the same clothes as so many others in crime fiction. He is a loner, a man of deep and complex thought, a man who is quite nonlinear, a survivor of Auschwitz, and very keen. The story takes off when a housekeeper in service to landed gentry is killed in what is seemingly a simple household accident. This is where all the pertinent characters begin to appear in the story. In very traditional fashion, the back stories of each of the suspects are explained and told by the omniscient narrator. The author methodically advances the story as he builds the suspense. Soon a second murder occurs, and this time there is no doubt as to whether it is an accident or not.

So far so good. It is what we expect and we are giddy with anticipation of what will come next. The story crescendos and then, the author abruptly switch gear quite suddenly as the denouement for the first story is postponed indefinitely until the second story is started. For a time there I was quite annoyed with this change of events, and naturally angry with Mr. Horowitz.

As it turns out, and this is where the genius of Mr. Horowitz rears its head, the coupling and inter connectedness of the fiction within the fiction comes to the fore. The second story revolves around the editor of a publisher, Cloverleaf Books, the publisher of the Atticus Pünd series of murder mysteries. The author of the series, the cash cow of Cloverleaf Books, Alan Conway had just died, apparently of a suicide, right after he’d delivered his latest book in the series to the publisher, except he delivered it without an ending. The main protagonist of the modern day story, Susan Ryeland, is the editor for the publisher, it is through her eyes that we observe the complex interactions of crime solving once again, except now, instead of look at it through the familiar styles of the great British mystery writers, it is through the eyes of an editor, someone who is not omniscient and decidedly not a practiced crime solver.

As the second story unfold, we are treated to a second trip through the investigation and fact finding process of fictional crime solving. The brilliance of this book is that it is telling two stories in two different ways, two different styles, and in two different epochs. Even more impressively, the aforementioned Easter eggs, puns, and intended word plays really make their presence known as Susan Ryeland unravels the writing style and tricks that Alan Conway employs to tell his story. Just like in the first half of the book, Mr. Horowitz advances his plot patiently and builds up the suspense in a masterful manner. For the second time in the same book, he drew me into the swirl of intrigue methodically until I was completely trapped in Magpie Murders.

The beauty of the plotting of this book is that the denouement of the Susan Ryeland/Alan Conway part of the book is completely dependent on the denouement of the Atticus Pünd mystery. And Mr. Horowitz does not disappoint, all the pieces are brought together and there is a large amount of: “Why didn’t I see this!” as I wound down my reading experience, which is always a large part of the satisfaction of reading a good mystery.

In short, this was a brilliant book, by its complex plotting and development of the characters, it accomplished the main thing: it entertained me.

I must admit that I had no idea who Anthony Horowitz is prior to reading this particular book but now I will keep that name in the back of my head for future reading enjoyments.

Book Review-Ignorance How it Drives Science

This book came onto my radar when I was reading Warren Burger’s book A More Beautiful Question. Burger referenced this book. As I was curious and Burger’s book sparked an interest in this topic, I proceeded to procure this book.

It took a while for me to get back to this book as I became interested in other things. I’d started it but I continued to pick it up and putting it down over the months. It wasn’t because of the writing or of the subject matter. It was because the book brought out a certain amount of my own ignorance and caused me to ask some unanswerable questions.

Stuart Firestein is a neuroscientist, and how he got to this particular field is fascinating by itself. I will leave him to tell that story and not ruin the narrative. It is in the chapter titled Case Histories.

This is a short book, packed with excellent insights and interesting stories. The author approaches the task of convincing the reader of the importance of ignorance as the centerpiece of intellectual and scientific inquiry from a broad perspective. Even though he is countering the intellectual history of the MO of our societal approach to science and scientific inquiry, he makes his mutiny palatable and very rational.

The idea is that the mass media and the lay community looks upon science and the goals of science with the wrong attitude, even some scientists live in a world where the tail is wagging the dog. The purpose of scientific inquiry is not to create knowledge, the purpose is to create ignorance, but not just ignorance but quality ignorance; ignorance that will push our thoughts towards better understanding and towards action that will expand our ideas and ask better questions. These questions must necessarily expand and dig deeper into our knowledge. In other words, to give us more areas of known ignorance so that we can research and investigate these open areas.

The author uses the familiar technique of digging into scientific history to give us anecdotal history of specific stories. He has combed through the scientific histories for some extremely interesting stories, he’s included many different areas of science, including his own expertise of neurosciences, as well as physics, astronomy, mathematics, etc. Fortunately for us, he is a very good story teller.

I will say that I have become jaded to this process of illustrating specific points by the author spinning a yarn which supports exactly his thesis, but when the tactic is well executed, such as this book is, I will overlook my pet peeve.

The book is in eight chapters. The initial chapters are used to present the author’s main argument about ignorance. In those chapters he goes into great depths to convince us of his main argument: that the cultivation of ignorance is the primary function of scientific inquiry. I was already a convert so I would say that he was successful in that regard. Chapters four, five, and six are the author’s way of presenting the structure of the ignorance business, the foibles of making predictions regarding scientific progress prematurely and under dubious assumptions.

My favorite chapter is the Quality of Ignorance, because the author delineates the difference between cultivating just ignorance and ignorance with a purpose. The main differentiator is that the quality ignorance must create more and better questions and unknowns which will drive the scientific inquiries deeper.

The longest chapter is chapter seven: Case histories. This is where he uses the case history tool to illustrate his points on how ignorance helps drive the inquiry and the nonlinear way it creates pathways to more knowledge. I must say that this chapter was kind of a long slog, but worthy of the slogging. It definitely did its job.

Finally, the author drives home the point regarding the importance of using ignorance and the gravitas of having this kind of mindset as it advances not just science, but society forward.

This book was published in 2012, and by then, the anti-intellectualism and wanton lack of scientific knowledge of the general public is already well known. The last chapter is actually a pleas for sanity. As I read this chapter five years since its publication, I marvel at how far we have fallen. I would like to say that the author was prescient in his prognostication, but sadly, he wasn’t prescient enough, for we are at a much worse point in time than he had predicted.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I did have to put it down often to contemplate and reflect on what he is saying. I believe that was his purpose and he did very well in meeting his purpose.