The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz Narrator: Rory Kinnear
Series: Hawthorne and Horowitz #1
Published by HarperCollins Publishers on June 5, 2018
Source: Purchased
Genres: Mystery
Length: 9 hrs 2 mins
Format: Audiobook
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New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty, Anthony Horowitz has yet again brilliantly reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes.
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.
Horowitz is just a little too clever for me. In The Word is Murder, he’s inserted a fictional version of himself as the detective’s sidekick. It’s all very meta and distracting for me. The mystery itself is good, a woman is killed the same day she plans her own funeral. There are several secrets in her past that may have to do with the murder. She also has a famous actor son, which makes the case more interesting to the media.
Horowitz the character is drawn into the case by a detective who consults for the police. Hawthorne can be a bit grating. He’s supposed to be the brilliant, idiosyncratic Holmes-ish character to Horowitz. The characters and mystery are actually well-done. I like the false leads and how to some extent the slightly bumbling Horowitz encourages them. The clues are all there, but the time line falls apart a little. I think I tend to want to like Horowitz’s stories more than I actually do. I like his writing style, I like the way the mystery is designed, I like that The Word is Murder uses some of the familiar mystery formula but twists it just a bit. Overlooking the timing discrepancy, I think I would have liked the book more if the author character had been entirely fictional.
I listened to the audio version and Kinnear did a good job as the narrator. The story is in the first person and I’m afraid I’ll be confused if I ever hear Horowitz’s actual voice, since now, in my head, he sounds like Kinnear’s version of his version of himself. Yeah – a bit too meta for me.
One final comment. How long until our amateur’s, whether they be the main detective or the side-kick, learn not to go out on their own into potentially dangerous situations? At least Horowitz wasn’t wearing high heels.
About Anthony Horowitz
Anthony John Horowitz, CBE (born 5 April 1955) is an English novelist and screenwriter specializing in mystery and suspense. Anthony has written over 50 books including the bestselling teen spy series Alex Rider, which is estimated to have sold 21 million copies worldwide and has been turned into a hugely successful TV series by Amazon Freevee.
Anthony is also an acclaimed writer for adults and was commissioned to write two new Sherlock Holmes novels The House of Silk and Moriarty. He was commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to write continuation novels for James Bond with Trigger Mortis and Forever and Day, published in 2015 and 2018 respectively. A third novel in the series With a Mind to Kill was published in May 2022.
Anthony’s award-winning novel Magpie Murders was published in October 2016 to critical acclaim and was serialised on BritBox at the beginning of 2022 with Lesley Manville in the lead role. It will be televised on the BBC in 2023. The sequel, Moonflower Murders, will begin filming in September 2023. His new series featuring Detective Hawthorne and a sidekick called Anthony Horowitz has four books so far: The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line to Kill and the recently published The Twist of a Knife. Anthony has just started work on a fifth: Close to Death.
Horowitz has also written for television, contributing scripts to ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot and adapting six early episodes of Midsomer Murders from the novels of Caroline Graham, including the first three episodes. He was the creator and writer of the ITV series Foyle’s War, Collision and Injustice, and the BBC series Crime Traveller and New Blood.
In 2019 Anthony became a Patron to Home-Start in Suffolk, a small local family support charity working with families across the Suffolk county, as they navigate through challenging circumstances such as mental health issues, bereavement, long term or terminal illness, isolation, domestic abuse, poverty and so much more.
Hmmm…interesting…I haven’t read this yet but I will. Soon…
I hope you enjoy it.
I’m not sure about the meta aspect of this book.
That’s where he lost me a little. I just don’t need cleverness for its own sake.
I did read another story very similar to this one. Someone planning their funeral in detail and then winding up dead immediately. It did not go down well for me.
That part actually fit in quite well with the solution.