Moonflower Murders

Rated TV-14 • PBS

Moonflower Murders is the second Masterpiece Mystery series from author and TV showrunner Anthony Horowitz to feature crime-novel editor Susan Ryeland. Horowitz, most known for the WWII mystery series Foyle’s War, adapts Moonflower Murders from his own novel of the same name in this six-­episode series.

Susan (the always enchanting Lesley Manville) is running a hotel in Crete with her boyfriend when she’s called back to England to help track down a missing young woman. Cecily disappeared not long after reading Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, one of the novels Susan edited for the late mystery writer Alan Conway. Conway based his novel on a real murder that had taken place eight years earlier, and Cecily’s parents suspect it has something to do with her disappearance.

As with some of Horowitz’s other projects, Moonflower Murders takes on a meta quality as it plays with notions of author, text, and reader for its audience’s amusement. The action jumps back and forth between Susan’s reality and the story of Conway’s Hercule Poirot knockoff, Atticus Pünd.

Viewers must keep three separate mysteries straight as the series progresses. Where is Cecily? Who committed the murder eight years previous? And what’s the solution to Conway’s mystery novel? Every now and then Susan’s grasp on reality begins to waver as Mr. Pünd stops by to have a chat about the case.

Though the series doesn’t have objectionable language, it contains a homosexual subplot. The gay characters aren’t portrayed sympathetically, but, then again, none of the people Susan is dealing with come across as particularly likable. I suppose a satisfying mystery requires a passel of potential bad guys.