“I’m trying to solve a crime,” says one detective, testily, to another. His partner coolly replies, “In fiction, or in real life?”

It’s a perfect little exchange that sums up the appeal of “Marble Hall Murders,” the third and supposedly final installment of Anthony Horowitz’s delicious mystery series streaming on PBS starting Sunday. In each series, a present-day murder to be solved by book editor extraordinaire Susan Ryeland (played by Lesley Manville) is entwined with a Golden Age murder mystery, solved by fictional detective Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan). Horowitz adapted his own novels for the screen, and you can sense the fun he’s having as his detectives playfully connect across time.

Credit’s due to Manville for “Marble Hall Murders,” both the book and the television series, existing at all: Horowitz, in the acknowledgments at the end of the novel, notes that he hadn’t planned on writing a third Susan Ryeland book — until Manville said, at the end of shooting the previous installment (“Moonflower Murders,” which was preceded by “Magpie Murders”), that she’d love to do another. “In that moment, this book sparked into life,” he wrote. (It’s not as if we didn’t already have plenty for which to thank the great Manville; my favorites of her performances include “Another Year,” “Phantom Thread,” “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” Princess Margaret in “The Crown” and all three installments of this series.)

This time around, Susan is starting life over again as a freelance editor in London, after breaking up with her Greek boyfriend and getting a smart new flat and a cat named Hugo. (Of course she still has her candy-apple red MG, the equivalent of a superhero’s cape.) She’s been asked to work on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel, “Pünd’s Last Case,” written by Eliot Crace (Jamie Blackley), the troubled grandson of a legendary children’s author (Patricia Hodge). The Crace family, however, turns out to have a multitude of dark secrets, entwining Susan in a web that stretches back to the events of “Magpie Murders” — and ultimately connecting her with Detective Inspector Ian Blakeney (Danny Sapani), a cop whose true ambition is to write detective stories.

Meanwhile, in “Pünd’s Last Case,” the gentlemanly Hercule Poirot-ish detective travels to sunny Corfu, Greece, and gets caught up in a saga involving the mysterious death of a British matriarch (also played by Hodge) with her own complicated family ties, all the while facing his own mortality. A local police officer (Zubin Varla), noting that Pünd is paler than his linen summer suit, asks what’s wrong. “It’s final,” is all Pünd will say, softly; he’s a man quietly fading away.

“Marble Hall Murders” dances elegantly between these two stories, letting us find the parallels between them (note the double-casting, which often provides a hint) and occasionally overlapping. Sometimes Susan spots Pünd, quietly watching her; sometimes a sound seems to reverberate across the decades, as when Pünd hears a cat meow and it’s actually Susan’s Hugo. Note how the Pünd story is shot in less vivid colors, as if worn away a bit by time, and how that story occasionally feels a little awkward, as if it’s written by a less skilled writer (as, indeed, it is; Eliot’s good, but he’s no Alan Conway).

And the acting, across the board, is top-notch: I particularly appreciated Hodge’s elegant hauteur, Sapani’s aged-in-oak voice and sly chemistry with Manville (I’d quite like a prequel about D.I. Blakeney, who seems like he has a lot of stories to tell), McMullan’s wistful wisdom and of course Manville’s uncanny way of making Susan seem to operate at an ever-so-slightly quicker speed than everyone else in the room. The series ends on an exquisitely poignant, fanciful note, as two characters meet once more across time, with mutual respect. Is it the end? I hope not; I’d follow these two anywhere.

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‘MARBLE HALL MURDERS’

Rating: TV-14

How to watch: Premieres 9 p.m. ET Sept. 6 on PBS, with new episodes dropping Sundays

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