74 pages • 2 hours read
Marble Hall Murders
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Character Analysis
Content Warning: This section contains discussions of death, graphic violence, animal cruelty, substance use, addiction, illness, physical abuse, and child death.
Susan Ryeland
In Horowitz’s previous novels, Susan spent 11 years working at Cloverleaf, Charles Clover’s publishing house. Their author Alan Conway blended real life and fiction in a malicious way, and this resulted in Charles killing him. Then, Charles attempted to kill Susan because she was going to turn him in to the police. After this disaster, Susan moved to Crete with her boyfriend Andreas. There, she began working as a freelance editor for Causton Books.
At the beginning of Marble Hall Murders, she leaves Andreas and moves from Crete to London. She is “married to [her] work” (258), in her fifties, and lonely. Susan’s sister, Katie, gets Susan a pet cat; Susan names it Hugo. Susan takes assignments, like Pund’s Last Case, that she doesn’t want to take because she needs the money, indicating that she doesn’t have generational wealth.
When Susan starts working with Eliot on the new Atticus Pund novel, she realizes he is blending real-life and fiction, like Alan. She feels as if her personality shifts when she starts talking to members of the Crace family because she is always “tiptoeing around the truth” (261). Susan’s ongoing deceptions, questions, and “impulsive” (187) behavior cause many members of the Crace family to dislike her.
