Books: The Word is Murder By Anthony Horowitz (2017)

"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.