The Word is Murder

The Word is Murder

By Anthony Horowitz

A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11 a.m. on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz—a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories—suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery.

But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes that he’s at the center of a story he can’t control, and his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own.

Finally getting back on track with my reading program - although I was reading (To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is greatly improved when you catch all the little clues and asides when you already know what happens) I was steadily ignoring all the books on my e-reader which I'd checked out and then turned off my wifi so the library wouldn't take them back, since they're all weeks and weeks overdue. This includes Summer House Party which I thought could work either for favorite season or book with a party in, but didn't like at all (it was three novellas and I stopped after the first one, and frankly, can't even remember it anymore) and Olive Kitteridge, which is very well written, but sort of depressing, so I got a few chapters in and couldn't pick it back up. Anyway, I'm expecting some others to turn up soon in my library queue, so I figured I had a limited amount of time to actually read ANY of them before the wifi was turned back on and they disappeared, so I read The Word is Murder in one day and enjoyed it very much. 

One of the most unique things in the book - the self-insertion of the author - was also one of the most off-putting at times. I found myself wondering how Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg feel to see themselves given roles in a fictional book about real people, and I can only assume poor Damian Lewis (who was the other lead in Homeland), bears the brunt, as he bears so much resemblance to the fictional actor Damian Cowper (apart from being murdered, that is - spoiler!).

Unlike Gaudy Night, I found it satisfyingly mysterious. I did have an inkling who the murderer was (as well as the side-mini mystery) but still found the conclusion entertaining and engrossing, if a bit too Ruth-Ware-victim-walks-straight-into-the-murderer's-clutches at the end.  In that way, Horowitz as narrator is genius, since it allows him to be a little bit smarter than the readers, but not as smart as the detective.  A good stand-in for the reading public, although I also wondered at times if the whole thing was a set-up on a much larger scale, i.e., The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (which appears multiple times in To Say Nothing of the Dog, so perhaps I was over-primed in that direction). 

It also has the wonderful publicity of making me curious about Horowitz's other books, particularly the Alex Rider series, since he mentions them so much.  Subliminal advertising.  I've also only just realized that Horowitz is responsible for much of Midsommer Murders, which I absolutely adore and watched at least the first five seasons back in the initial pandemic rush of entertainment consumption. It's an excellent companion to a jigsaw puzzle. 

I found it to be a bizarre mix of real and fake, but engaging and a good mystery, for all that, and perhaps more importantly, I am back on track with forward momentum!

14: A Book with Cutlery on the Cover or in the Title