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Summary
Summary
SHE PLANNED HER OWN FUNERAL. BUT DID SHE ARRANGE HER OWN MURDER?
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.
A masterful and tricky mystery that springs many surprises, The Word is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Voice actor Kinnear sounds playfully peevish and impatient when portraying the narrator of Horowitz's hugely entertaining whodunit, adding to the novel's sense of fun. Daniel Hawthorne, a respected former Metro policeman who has been hired to consult on a strange murder case, pressures popular novelist Anthony Horowitz (a fictionalized version of the author himself) to write a book about him and his investigation. Diana Cowper, a well-to-do widow, has been strangled in her London residence, and Hawthorne and Horowitz's investigation leads them to the scene of a long-ago tragedy at a seaside resort in Kent and another murder. Horowitz isn't the only "real" person to appear in the story; directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson appear and, along with an assortment of colorful suspects, are smoothly enacted by Kinnear. Horowitz's mystery is as cleverly constructed as the classic whodunits of the golden age, populated by fascinating characters and peppered with fair-play clues. Kinnear's faultless delivery is completely in tune with the author's ability to mix murder and mirth. A Harper hardcover. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Anthony Horowitz's 2016 novel The Magpie Murders offered an ingenious twist on a classic whodunnit, and his latest book, The Word Is Murder(Century, [pound]20), takes things a step further, with a mashup of fact and fiction. Six hours after she has made arrangements for her own funeral, wealthy widow Diana Cowper is found strangled. It might be a straightforward robbery gone wrong, but former cop Hawthorne, currently employed by Scotland Yard on a freelance basis, thinks otherwise, and asks Horowitz if he'd like to tag along and write up an account of his investigation. There is plenty of metafictional fun to be had, but readers may find themselves more interested in the uneasy relationship between Hawthorne and the fictionalised author, and in Horowitz's reflections on his career, than they are in the somewhat under-engineered plot. When authors insert themselves into their fiction, there is a sense in which all bets are off -- something that is also true of the work of French author Pascal Garnier, who died in 2010. Garnier's startling and surprisingly moving novels tend to centre on strange goings-on in French provincial settings, creating a world that is at once familiar and utterly bizarre. In Low Heights (Gallic, [pound]8.99, translated by Melanie Florence), grumpy contrarian businessman Edouard Lavenant has retired, after a stroke, to a village in the mountains, where he engages in sniping matches with his nurse-cum-housekeeper and tries to write his memoirs. He experiences the loneliness of the elderly survivor and fears for his faculties: "A word was blinking in his head like a hazard light: SENILE." This, and various portents -- the circling vultures, the two women who keep appearing, and the death by articulated lorry of a tricycling child -- show us that all is not well. When a stranger appears at the door claiming to be Lavenant's long-lost son, things start to go horribly wrong in entirely unexpected ways. Five bodies found in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains National Park are the starting point for Sleeping Beauties, the third book in Jo Spain's series featuring Inspector Thomas Reynolds of Dublin's murder investigation unit (Quercus, [pound]13.99). All the corpses are of young women who have disappeared in recent years, and they were held captive for some time before they died. It's likely that they are the victims of a serial killer -- and Reynolds and his colleagues need to find missing Fiona Holland before she becomes the next. Adding to the stress is the fact that Reynolds's new boss seems more at home with PR than policing. There is a good balance between pace and pathos -- Reynolds's old boss and mentor Sean McGuiness, who has retired to take care of a wife in the grip of Alzheimer's, is especially touching. Spain tackles the age-old victim-blaming attitudes surrounding the investigation with a matter-of-factness that makes them all the more reprehensible. Deft plotting and expert handling of tension make for an intelligent mystery. Emily Elgar's debut, If You Knew Her (Sphere, [pound]7.99), is a welcome addition to the ranks of coma lit. Cassie Jensen, victim of a mysterious accident in a country lane, is taken to the critical care ward at St Catherine's Hospital, Sussex, where she lies in a coma. In the next bed is Frank Ashcroft, inert but alert. The doctors think Frank is in a persistent vegetative state, and only Alice, the compassionate and intuitive nurse, realises that he is suffering from " locked-in " syndrome -- as he himself tells the reader, "trapped in my body, like a straightjacket". Unable to communicate, he becomes both unwitting confessor to Alice, and an eavesdropper. He pieces together the true reason for Cassie's condition from actions and conversations he is not considered able to see or hear, much less understand. He, Alice and a pre-coma Cassie pass the narrative baton between them, and slowly their stories weave into fine character studies, particularly in the case of Frank, who lives in a world of regrets -- the drinking, the wrecked marriage, the bittersweet relationship with his daughter. There is also a wonderfully insidious build-up of tension. Caleb Zelic, private investigator and narrator of Australian writer Emma Viskic's outstanding debut Resurrection Bay (Pushkin Vertigo, [pound]12.99), is cut off from the world by a profound deafness that has made him not only a vigilant observer of nonverbal clues, but also a human bulwark against emotional closeness. When he goes to an old friend's home and discovers that the man has been brutally murdered, he must -- with the aid of his partner, former police officer Frankie, and a final text message from the dead man -- prove his own innocence by finding the killer. Set in Melbourne and the eponymous coastal town where Caleb grew up, this is a gripping and violent tale with a hero who is original and appealing. - Laura Wilson.
