Title: The Word is Murder
Published: 2018
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
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.
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.
My musings:
I had heard a lot of good things about The Word is Murder,
and after reading it, I know why! This is one very clever mystery, in which the
author inserts himself as a sidekick to his fictional detective solving the
murder case. Fictional or not? To be honest, I was never quite sure. Were the
people Horowitz describes in his books real life characters, or figments of his
imagination? This constant pondering was one of my favourite things whilst
reading the novel, the best kind of guessing game.
Apart from Horowitz starring in his own novel, the story is
written very much in the vein of an old-fashioned whodunit. If you like classic
detective and sidekick pairings, like Christie’s Captain Hastings and Detective
Poirot or Sherlock Homes and Dr Watson, then you will most likely appreciate
Horowitz’ love-hate partnership with Hawthorne. He is as prickly as he is
smart, and his observation skills are second to none. There are plenty of clues
strewn into the story that will please any die-hard armchair detective, and the
absence of “the killer twist you will never see coming” was quite a refreshing
change from my recent fare of psychological thriller that all tried to outdo
each other in that department. I’m not saying that there weren’t any red
herrings or surprises, just that we could generally trust the narrator to tell
the truth and let us in on the clues as they come his way and allow us to do
some sleuthing. I love that, and I admire the skill with which Horowitz has
carved himself a unique niche in a genre oversaturated with books that follow a
similar pattern.
The prickly Hawthorne is so elusive with information about
his personal life that he is setting himself up as the perfect character to
lead many more mysteries, in which we will hopefully get to unpeel a few layers
and find out some juicy facts about the man. I for one am thoroughly intrigued
by him, and very curious! Horowitz, on the other hand, was refreshingly
forthcoming with facts about his life as a writer, though of course the line
between fact and fiction was never properly drawn, so I’m not sure about his
actual reality. His writing style flows well with the ease of the seasoned
writer he is, and his wicked sense of humour shines through the pages in his
characters and small puns strewn in amongst the mystery’s clues, often just as
cleverly disguised that I guffawed when my own dull wit finally caught on.
Summary:
All in all, this was a thoroughly entertaining read
disguised as a classical whodunit that
will test your own sleuthing skills. I must admit that I miserably failed in
that department and would have evoked a scornful snort by from Hawthorne, if he would be gracious
enough to acknowledge my presence at all. Probably not.
Very highly recommended! I look forward to picking up the
next book in the series, The Sentence is Death.
No comments:
Post a Comment