The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

I have long been a fan of Horowitz’s work – from his screen plays in Midsomer Murders to Foyle’s War, his Sherlock Holmes books and Magpie Murders, so was very excited to read his latest, The Word is Murder.

What an unusual and gripping book it is. Opening with a woman, Diana Cowper who, after planning her own funeral, is found dead hours later, this is not the most captivating element of this engrossing book. The most unusual and fascinating aspect is that Horowitz inserts himself as both narrator and a character into the story.

Drawn into the investigation of Cowper’s murder when it’s used to bait him into writing a book about the lead investigator, a curmudgeonly fellow named Hawthorne, Horowitz finds himself playing reluctant second-fiddle to the irascible and narcissistic ex-copper. Thrown out of the Met some years earlier for something he refuses to discuss with Horowitz, Hawthorne is nonetheless employed on a consultancy basis to run parallel investigations – the murder of Diana Cowper being one such instance. His policing talents, he informs Horowitz, being formidable.

Horowitz finds the story surrounding the murder too compelling and reluctantly agrees to write the book, shadowing the detective who, as the novel progresses, slowly reveals he is more than first impressions indicate.

When another body turns up after Diana’s actual funeral, Horowitz is not only hooked, but finds himself desiring to play detective as well. Only, he’s a far better writer than he is a gum-shoe investigator, and he finds himself putting his foot in it on more than one occasion.

Often self-deprecating, Horowitz’s unreliable narrator-writer-would-be-detective is also highly amusing. Not afraid to name-drop, the reader l

earns of meetings with the likes of Spielberg and Peter Jackson, his agonies over Foyle’s War and his Alex Jackson series of YA novels among many others. His relationship with his agent is woven into the story as are his writerly doubts, ego and undoubted joy in what he does – well, the agony and the ecstasy.

Playing with the genres of autobiography, biography, crime and mystery, Horowitz writes and is written into a book that celebrates and defies all of these. The main plot is intriguing enough to satisfy any crime buff, but what is delightful and extraordinary about this book is Horowitz’s role and the relationship between truth and fiction, characters and their creators, the art of writing versus the business and so much in-between.

A terrific page-turner of a novel that once you start, you’ll find impossible to put down.

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