I’m looking for a murder mystery book that involves an author as a character/book within a book or some other meta element to it, sort of in the vein of Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, or Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson.
I’m currently writing a book in the Agatha Christie style with authors as the central characters and looking for some more books to compare mine to. Thank you!
by JackieReadsAndWrites
2 Comments
The term you may be looking for is bibliomysteries. Obviously they won’t all feature murder / authors but plenty do (the only rule is they must involve books in some way).
The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC publishes tons of these. Some as novellas, some as anthologies. I’ve read a dozen or so, and can recommend them.
Some more info here: https://www.mysteriousbookshop.com/collections/mysterious-bookshop-bibliomysteries
There’s also the Donald Westlake classic _The Hook_ which takes Highsmith’s _Strangers on a Train_ trope and moves it into the literary world. One of the best books by one of the best authors and one you don’t see mentioned enough.
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. Part of the Peter Wimsey series and the first book of the series to feature the reoccurring character of Harriet Vane, a mystery writer. A later book Gaudy Night is entirely from Harriet’s point of view.