The Word Is Murder (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery)

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At first, the prolific British novelist and television screenwriter Anthony Horowitz demurs, or at least says he does in the novel The Word Is Murder, the debut outing in a projected series. A character named “Anthony Horowitz,” who is in most respects exactly like the real writer, agrees to assist the sleuth. The former police detective has been called in by the London Met to solve the murder of a wealthy matron strangled in her parlor—just hours after visiting an undertaker to plan her own funeral. Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me." Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. HOROWITZ: Broadly speaking, I'm more interested in clues, relationships and puzzles and riddles and pulling the wool over people's eyes and in revealing things in a way that will make the reader smile. So the actual murder method itself is sometimes less significant.

As always, Anthony Horowitz kept the fast pace of this mystery story sprinting along. There are clues along the way, and even knowing the significance of some of them, it is still difficult to put everything together without one last piece of information that we find out when it is almost too late. The distinction between fiction and non-fiction, I’d like to believe, is clear enough where I don’t need to explain it. When we read fictional novels, we do so to distance ourselves from reality, to entertain ourselves with hypothetical scenarios which happen to people who aren’t real. However, we can never help but imagine how we ourselves would fare in those stories, and Anthony Horowitz set out to find out just this in The Word is Murder, the first novel in the Detective Hawthorne Series. HOROWITZ: Evil does have an attractive quality. I think doing something bad, being mean, breaking the law has a strange visceral appeal. Maybe it's something to do with liberty - the fact that being bad sets us free because we're not obeying rules, we're breaking them. I don't know. I mean, in my life, I try to do good, but I'm often tempted by bad. And it's certainly true that when I'm writing a book, the villain is the one that I enjoy creating most. On its face, this blend of details about Horowitz’s life, work, and personality, with the creation of the fictional detective and murder is at risk of being unbearably self-centred. It’s a pleasant surprise that it is not. Horowitz does mention points of his career and projects that he has worked on as a means of entry to some parts of the story (and occasionally anecdotally), but it comes in the form of interesting tidbits, rather than bragging. There’s even a scene including a few famous directors that is quite hilarious. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. ― Anthony Horowitz, The Word Is Murder The Ciphers of our AmusementSIMON: I don't get a chance to ask this question of many people. How many people do you think you've killed? An extremely private, private detective, Daniel Hawthorne, is skilled at solving crimes by blowing up secrets and has a wealth of secrets of his own. And that ending. Oh, that ending drove me bonkers, because it relied on one of the worst genre tropes--tv tropes--there is. We also end with not learning much about Hawthorne, for all Tony's attempts at 'investigation,' but we do know too much more about Tony. I will give him credit; he was willing to allow himself to be perceived as an insecure and obtuse person. Dr. Watson indeed. In "The Word is Murder" Anthony Horowitz (ostensibly) accompanies detective Daniel Hawthorne on an investigation, then writes a book (this one) about the case. Loved it! I was a fan of Magpie Murders, really enjoyed it. I couldn't wait to get to another Anthony Horowitz book. I grabbed it without even reading the blurb, which is very, very rare. But I knew I would probably be in for a fun ride. And naturally, he didn't disappoint.

Six hours after Diana Cowper, mother of famous actor Damien Cowper visits a funeral parlor to discuss plans for her own funeral, she is killed in her own home. Coincidence, or not? Was she aware of a threat to her life or was it something else entirely? HOROWITZ: Yes, that's right. This is a classic whodunit sort of trope, whereby the main character, who seems blameless in the first few chapters, has got a dark secret lurking in the past, which may or may not have something to do with her demise. HOROWITZ: Well, that's one of the sort of fun aspects of writing it, which is the hero's a character that I suppose I've created. And yet, at the same time, I just don't get on with him. He has some views which I find very distasteful. He's not the easiest of men. I’ve never read anything quite like it before. Despite the somber circumstances, I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. The author’s tone is perfect and absolutely spot on, albeit tongue in cheek- mostly. The cops in London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) need Diana's case solved fast. So an MPS official prevails on a former police detective, Daniel Hawthorne - a brilliant sleuth who was fired for bad behavior - to 'consult' on the investigation.A total joy. Anthony is a master entertainer, the genius twists and turns of his writing and plot keep me on the edge of my seat.' Rory Kinnear This book was yet another great novel that slid down my hopeless TBR list and sat collecting virtual dust in my ‘currently reading’ folder for well over a year. The upside to that is that now I don’t have to wait for the second book to come out. It’s already on my Kindle- hopefully it won’t take me another two years to get around to reading it. 😁 And what they know is this !!!. A woman walks into a funeral parlour, in South Kensington, and arranges her own funeral, right down to the last detail. And on the same day, six hours later, she is found strangled in her own home. A woman who did not have an enemy in the world and liked by everyone. As a creator of compelling crime fiction, Horowitz is what is known as a civilian, an outsider who relies on imagination and research. He brings no special expertise derived from spending time as a homicide detective (Joseph Wambaugh), a criminal attorney (Linda Fairstein), a mental health practitioner (Jonathan Kellerman), or even a cop reporter (Michael Connelly). Teen spy … Stormbreaker, the film version of Horowitz’s Alex Rider series. Photograph: c.MGM/Everett/Rex Features

Near the novel’s climax, Horowitz grows frustrated with his role of Hawthorne’s Dr. Watson and attempts to solve the case himself. “I have allowed myself to become a silent partner, a minor character in my own book,” the character complains. Yet when he acts on his own, the result is disaster. Anthony Horowitz, a.k.a. Tony, the narrator, a ghostwriter for Hawthorne based on the author himself As fun as it might be to overlap truth and imagination, this element alone wouldn’t exactly make for a good novel, especially not a good murder mystery. Rest assured, Horowitz spent as much effort in crafting the mystery as he did in making his character dislike every one of Hawthorne’s bad habits.HOROWITZ: Yes, it is absolutely true. I mean, I had a very unusual upbringing as a child. My parents are very wealthy, and I never say that I had an unhappy childhood. I don't like to hear those words come out of my mouth with the knowledge that there are many, many children in the world who have childhood that is much, much less privileged than mine ever was. And now we have a book inspired by the famous detective duo, Holmes and Watson, as Daniel Hawthorne takes on an accomplice to transcribe the details of a murder for a true crime novel. In doing so Horowitz writes himself into a story of murder, treachery, and revenge, as he himself becomes the accomplice. And the word we have for such as imaginative collaboration and plot, is ‘ingenious’ !!!.