A Missing Chapter Kicks off the Premiere of 'Magpie Murders'
PBS’ newest mystery series, Magpie Murders, opens with a montage of Alan Conway Conleth Hill) struggling to produce chapter after chapter in his latest whodunit in the wildly popular Atticus Pünd series. (Think Poirot, but German rather than Belgian.) Once the novel is completed, Conway snaps his fountain pen, splattering ink across the page.
Oblivious to Conway’s frustrations, his editor, Head of Fiction at Clover Books Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville), is off at the Frankfurt Book Fair, promoting her star client’s mystery series. After a hard day of tough negotiating and fending off unwanted advances, a waiter comes to Susan’s hotel room door with champagne she didn’t order. After a little flirty roleplay, we learn the waiter is Susan’s boyfriend, Andreas Pataki (Alexandros Logothetis). She took off a day from teaching ancient Greek in a fancy London school to surprise her for the weekend.
While Ryeland was out, her boss, Charles Clover (Michael Maloney), reports Conway finally delivered the completed Magpie Murders to him over dinner the previous night. It’s good timing, and Charles mentions next week’s buyout meeting, where Citywide Media will want an answer to the generously compensated promotion on offer. Reluctant to get involved in the numbers game of publishing, Susan puts Charles off until Monday since she wants to get a shower and a few gin and tonics down her and settle in to read her client’s latest bestseller.
