Clever! Brilliant! I don’t think I will ever write a review for this author’s work without those two words included. 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. About a quarter of the way in, I had unraveled the mystery and surely knew the answer. Uh, about half way in, I knew I was wrong, because I had just figured out where I had made my mistake. Then about three-quarters of the way in, I decided I wasn’t as smart as Detective Hawthorne, the delightfully enigmatic character who is conducting this investigation, but only as smart as Anthony Horowitz (the character, not the writer). If that makes sense to you, you are well ahead of me...if it doesn’t, then you ought to read the book and then it will. A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. Such an interactive narrator is helpful at times in the mystery, as Horowitz gives vague clues that hint at the novel’s twist. For instance, Horowitz writes, “As for Chapter One, forget the bell and the Mont Blanc pen…[b]ut be assured that the rest of it, including a clue which would indicate, quite clearly, the identity of the killer, is spot on.” It is this narration that allows “The Word Is Murder” to be more than the average detective novel. What’s more, the detective in question does not fall into the usual character trope, although he possesses the uncanny ability to derive information from the simplest clues much like most detectives in such novels. Hawthorne is ex-police (due to a mysterious, years old incident that got him fired) and he is wholly unlikeable and a raging homophobe. Beyond these basic facts, Horowitz seems to know little else about Hawthorne, making the detective of the story a bit of a mystery himself.

With 10 million words under his belt, Horowitz has long toyed with penning a guide that details everything from how to plot a novel to how to deal with TV executives. “I even started to write it. But it was dull and slightly arrogant and, at the end of the day, it just didn’t interest me.” He laughs, unfazed by failure, which he regards as a healthy corrective. And what they know is this !!!. A woman walks into a funeral parlour, in South Kensington, and arranges her own funeral, right down to the last detail. And on the same day, six hours later, she is found strangled in her own home. A woman who did not have an enemy in the world and liked by everyone. SIMON: Oh, thank - well, I enjoyed the book. Now do we interview you as Horowitz, the novelist who created Hawthorne, or Horowitz, the novelist who is in this novel? My writing has saved me,” he says. “Simple as that.” He looks sheepish, before breaking into a smile. “When I was 10, and inadequate in many ways, writing was a lifeline. Now I have my life pretty much sorted out. In a world where everything seems to be uncertain, writing is the only certainty I have.” A total joy. Anthony is a master entertainer, the genius twists and turns of his writing and plot keep me on the edge of my seat.' Rory Kinnear

One thing you can say about horowitz, he certainly likes to base his mysteries around a Catchy Idea. In this book, he's written himself into the story, biographical details and all, but because I'm not a horowitz Fan, versed in his history and genre, I found it more distracting than intriguing. It left me wondering how much was fact, how much fiction, how much autobiography and how much artistic license. Perhaps this is part of his intention; an odd genre mash-up of mystery, memoir, fiction, and craft advice. This was such a great read. I absolutely loved that the author inserted himself into the story and quite honestly had to ask myself could this be real? The interplay of the characters was a draw as well as the ending which was quite threatening to our author, or was it? First published on the 4th of September, 2000, in the UK, this bestselling book was set to propel Anthony Horowitz’s profile forwards. Not only getting a film deal out of it, he’s also had a video-game and graphic-novel come from it as well over the following years. Setting up the ‘Alex Rider’ series, it creates the overall tone and feel for the books, whilst also establishing many of the main characters.

Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me." Robin Of Sherwood: Sanctuary (By: Michael Praed,Paul Birch,Richard Carpenter,Barnaby Eaton-Jones,Andy Secombe,Nikolas Grace) However, as the investigation gets under way, the duo begin to realise that Diane is not the person they thought she was because Mrs Cowper did have enemies and pulled out of a failed film production on the same day as her murder and a past transgression that keeps enemies looming large. She was acquitted by a judge who found her innocent of running over a child, but the judge was also an investor, and the accident was seen by a number of people. Drawn to the world that Holmes and Watson inhabited, the gas lamps, the growlers rattling over cobblestones and the swirling London fog, Horowitz writes himself into the novel by accepting a commission to work with ex-Police detective Daniel Hawthorne in solving a crime where two coincidences spell of a planned murder and two deaths, involving a mother and son, spell of a deadly game.In the end the crime is solved and Horowitz and Hawthorne warm up to each other a tad; in fact Hawthorne pays the writer a small compliment, to Horowitz's immense pleasure. Therein lies the case who killed Diana, and as Hawthorne meets with Horowitz we learn that the ex detective wants Horowitz to write a book on his exploits. They develop a kind of tenuous relationship as "Tony"(by the way he hates being called that), learns more and more about the elusive Hawthorn and his uncanny ability to see clues and solutions where none seem to be apparent. It is their interchange and search for the killer which drives this story forward with quite a few twists and turns with a nice amount of shady characters with possible motives. Teen spy … Stormbreaker, the film version of Horowitz’s Alex Rider series. Photograph: c.MGM/Everett/Rex Features Note--I had scored a cheap trade edition at Half Price Books. And it'll be passed on. Not worthy of my library space.

The mobbing disturbs him, though. He thinks it’s symptomatic of a rage in society that has grown since the Brexit vote. “There is a rigidity in the way we have begun to think and speak. If we step outside certain lines on certain issues, we find not just people disagreeing, but disagreeing to the extent of death threats. When somebody says something untoward in the press, and I am not saying this about myself, people don’t just say that was a stupid thing to say. They say, ‘Lose your job.’ They want you to never ever have an income again.”

Publication Order of Legends Books

This book was yet another great novel that slid down my hopeless TBR list and sat collecting virtual dust in my ‘currently reading’ folder for well over a year. The upside to that is that now I don’t have to wait for the second book to come out. It’s already on my Kindle- hopefully it won’t take me another two years to get around to reading it. 😁 All those W’s in my first sentence aside, this is not a funny book – although there is humour in it at times. What it is: deviously clever and fiendishly brilliant. There are accidental deaths, murders, and a great deal of confusion because there are so many linked parts in the chain of events. Yet, just as we see another link up ahead, without warning, the link that initially looked so solid turns out to be fragile. Broken, in fact. When detective Daniel Hawthorne approaches author Anthony Horowitz to write a novel about his work, Horowitz reluctantly agrees. As a result, he is drawn into a murder mystery that might be more dangerous than he could anticipate. Principal characters Nolan, Tom. “Mysteries: A Postmodern Procedural.” Review of The Word Is Murder, by Anthony Horowitz, The Good Son, by You-Jeon Jeong, and Still Lives, by Maria Hummel. The Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/mysteries-a-postmodern-procedural-1529093835. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.