Jane Eyre; Moonflower Murders

 

My friend was telling me "Jane Eyre" was one of her favorite books. I was pretty sure I had read it before (I remembered the crazy wife being locked in the attic, etc.) but I didn't remember the particulars. I started reading it and none of it sounded the least bit familiar, so I started to think maybe I hadn't read it before. I got about 2/3 of the way through it and came to a scene that was very vivid in my mind, so I think I did read it at some point when I was younger and just didn't remember it that well. At any rate, I enjoyed it. If you don't know the story: Jane Eyre is an orphan whose mean aunt sends her to a charity boarding school. It's pretty bad when Jane first gets there, but eventually conditions improve and Jane is able to get through school and teach for a few years before applying for a job as a governess. She travels to Thornfield Hall and meets Mr. Rochester, the guardian to little Adele. Despite Jane describing him as "ugly", it's clear from the get go that the two of them are attracted to each other. There is an odd woman living in the house, Mrs. Poole, who is apparently a seamstress, but Jane pays her no mind. Someone lights Mr. Rochester's bed on fire one night, and then one of his guests is mysteriously attacked. Nevertheless, when Mr. Rochester proposes, Jane accepts. At the altar, a surprise guest shows up to stop the whole thing. It turns out Mr. Rochester is already married, and his crazy wife is locked up in the attic at Thornfield. Jane flees and ends up finding a lovely family who take her in (this was the scene I remembered so vividly). Eventually Mr. Rochester and Jane find their way back to each other and it was a lovely happy ending.

EDIT: Hahaha, I was feeling nostalgic so I was rereading some of my old posts about books I read in 2007 and I totally read "Jane Eyre". I even blogged about it! Too funny. 

I'm glad I read the "Magpie Murders" first. I actually liked "Magpie" much better, although this one was good, too. I just felt the whole book within a book thing worked better the first time around, this time it felt really forced.

Former editor Susan is living in Crete with her boyfriend when she is visited by the Trehernes. They used to run a hotel in England and eventually their daughters took it over. Alan Conway, the author of the Atticus Pund books that Susan used to edit, stayed at their hotel not long after one of their guests was brutally murdered. The police blamed the murder on one of the hotel employees, who is currently in prison, but their daughter Cecily thinks Alan knew who the real killer was and wrote about it in his third Pund book, "Atticus Pund Takes the Case". Cecily told her parents she had figured it out--and now she's vanished. The Trehernes ask Susan to investigate, figuring she knew Alan better than anyone else. Susan accepts and goes to their hotel, where she re-reads the Atticus Pund book (and then we get to read it, too) about a former wealthy American movie star who is brutally murdered in her own home in the 1950s. There are plenty of suspects, but Atticus is able to figure it out. Of course after re-reading it Susan is totally perplexed as to how the book is related to the hotel murder. They're completely separate types of murders that bear no resemblance to each other. Horowitz was able to tie it all together very nicely with plenty of red herrings that kept me guessing.