Review: The Word is Murder - Anthony Horowitz ****

By Brian Clegg

Having recently been bowled over by the way that Janice Hallett subverted the mystery form in the likes of The Appeal, I found Anthony Horowitz’s twist here was also refreshing. I’d admired the cleverness of his Moriarty, and seen the TV adaptation of his Magpie Murders, which involves both a fictional mystery writer and their fiction. In his Hawthorne and Horowitz mysteries, of which this is the first, Horowitz goes one step further by involving himself in the plot.

What we get is a book written by Horowitz in the first person, in which a detective, Daniel Hawthorne, contacts him about writing a true crime book about an investigation that he is undertaking. The result is a fictional true crime book – Hawthorne and the crime are fictional, but the ‘Horowitz’ in the book is a version of the author. If, for example, you’ve watched Horowitz’s TV series Foyle’s War, there is double enjoyment in this, as he describes behind the scenes material on his work (at least some of which may be true) alongside the entirely fictional crime that the fictional Hawthorne is solving.

Clearly some of the ‘true’ parts are also constructed. Horowitz describes, for instance, a meeting with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. There could well have been such a meeting when Horowitz was working on a script for a never-made Tintin movie sequel – but certainly not the one described that was interrupted by the fictional detective turning up. 

The plot itself is suitably intriguing. A woman goes to a funeral director and arranges a funeral plan for herself – nothing particularly unusual there – but then she is murdered just a few hours later. Combined with a backstory that brings in a range of suspects, this is nicely handled, though in the end, it’s the originality of the framing that makes this a really good read.

It’s impossible not to be impressed by Horowitz’s ingenuity here. I enjoyed The Word is Murder and have already bought the next in the series – for me, it’s a winner.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.