Moonflower Murders fans confused as Lesley Manville's BBC drama returns
Moonflower Murders has returned to the BBC, and fans are loving the new adventures of Susan as she takes on another investigation into Alan Conway's novels - and the fictional adventures of Atticus Pund. However, one element of the story did leave fans confused…
The show is a follow-up to the 2022 series Magpie Murders, where book editor Susan investigates the death of one of her bestselling authors Alan Conway - believing that the answers about his death are in his final novel's missing chapter. Alan's books are about a detective character called Atticus Pund - who is dying in the first season as part of Alan's plan to end the series.
However, when Atticus appeared yet again in the follow-up series, it caused some questions, with one person writing: "Wasn't Pund dying in the last series? #MoonflowerMurders." Another fan replied: "It is about a Pund book that Alan Conway (also dead) wrote 8 years before."
So there you have it! Since Atticus is a fictional character within a book within the show, in the new series Susan is examining an older book about the detective, meaning that he is alive and well for the show - though we admit it sounds complicated!
Fans have been loving the new series, and have particularly praised Lesley's portrayal of Susan. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one person wrote: "Yeah I've seen #LesleyManville in about 8 different things in the last year or so and she's been fabulously different in them all." Another person wrote: "Anything Lesley Manville does is absolutely brilliant, the woman is a genius."
A third person added: "Fantastic performance from Lesley Manville and oh those locations. Beam me up Scotty to that stunning location in Crete."
Fortunately for fans of the series, the author behind the adaptations, Anthony Horowitz, is set to release a third instalment, titled Marble Hall Murders.
The synopsis reads: "She’s edited two novels about the famous detective, Atticus Pünd, and both times she’s come close to being killed. Now she’s back in England and she’s been persuaded to work on a third.
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"The new ‘continuation’ novel is by Eliot Crace, grandson of Miriam Crace who was the biggest selling children’s author in the world until her death exactly twenty years ago. Eliot believes that Miriam was deliberately poisoned. And when he tells Susan that he has hidden the identity of Miriam’s killer inside his book, Susan knows she’s in trouble once again.
"As Susan works on Pünd’s Last Case, a story set in an exotic villa in the South of France, she uncovers more and more parallels between the past and the present, the fictional and the real world – until suddenly she finds that she has become a target herself."
