Moonflower Murders: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses sexual abuse, ableism, violent murders.

The quest for justice is central to the intertwining fictional and real-world plots of Moonflower Murders. The novel’s structure revolves around two mysteries: the murders of Melissa James and Frances Pendleton in Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, and the murder of Frank Parris and the disappearance of Cecily Treherne in the real world. In both cases, Horowitz examines the process of uncovering the truth and bringing the guilty to account. Moonflower Murders reflects on the complexities of crime solving, highlighting the difference between the “tidy” resolutions of fictional crimes and the messier, more ambiguous nature of real-life justice. The book also shows that solving crimes constitutes only one part of justice, while the characters interrogate methods of punishment within the criminal justice system, questioning their efficacy and fairness.

In the tradition of Golden Age detective fiction from the 1920s and 1930s, authors like Agatha Christie presented crime as an intellectual puzzle, with justice restored once the detective solved the mystery. This framework portrays crime as the disruption of moral order, while holding the perpetrators responsible through logic and deduction restores justice.