"One
bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous
actor - enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Six
hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home.
Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric
investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne
needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses
Anthony Horowitz. Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the
center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and
annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves
irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the
same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of
his own."
Even
though I read the premise of the book, I was a bit hesitant at first to
actually read it. The whole idea of a real-life author inserting himself into
the story was and is a risky thing –I remember the criticism Stephen King got
when he incorporated himself in the later books of his Dark Tower
series. It leaves the author open to being made fun of, other words, as well as
being a distracting element within the tale they’re writing. So the big
question was how it was going to be handled. For the most part, The Word is
Murder is an excellent whodunit, a well constructed mystery with doses of
humor, memoir, how TV shows are created, and how to write essays.
Anthony
Horowitz remains a prolific novelist (some 40 plus novels, multiple
collections, graphic novels, and even movie scripts). He’s also the creator of
the long-running BBC series Midsomer
Murders (adapted from the Caroline Graham Chief Inspector Barnaby book
series) and Foyle’s War. He’s also written for other classic British
whodunit series such as Agatha Christie’s Poirot, as well as Robin of
Sherwood. He’s also well known for his James Bond inspired young
adult series Alex Rider (and was also chosen by the Estate of Ian
Fleming to continue writing James Bond inspired novels, including
2015’s Trigger Mortis and 2018’s Forever and A Day). Finally,
he’s also penned two Sherlock Holms novels, The House of Silk (2011) and
Morairty (2014).
This
newest series, called Hawthorne,
resembles Sherlock Holmes –the ex-police officer notices a great deal and has
the ability to make leaps of random reasoning. Hawthorne, like Holmes, also
comes across as dispassionate, cold, and arrogant. He kind of reminded me a bit
of Cormoran Strike series, written by J.K. Rowling and published under the
pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Strike too is a bit offensive at times, even cruel.
Another trait Horowitz’s gives Hawthorne that resembles Holmes is his flair for
showmanship, often keeping his methods and evidence hidden until the last
possible moment so as to impress observers –or in this matter, writer Anthony
Horowitz.
Even
if you might consider the book self-indulgent of Horowitz, I admit it was a
clever murder mystery. There was no obvious clues dropped that would make the
reader guess who the killer was and there are plenty of red herrings to keep
you turning the page.
So it’s a tricky mystery that springs
some surprises and one that doesn’t insult the reader with obviousness that
befalls a lot of this genre over the last thirty or so years.
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