The Word is Murder

Starred review from February 26, 2018
This spectacular series launch from bestseller Horowitz (Magpie Murders), a scrupulously fair whodunit, features a fictionalized version of himself. The author’s doppelgänger—who, like his creator, has written a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The House of Silk, and a Tintin movie script for Steven Spielberg—is approached by Daniel Hawthorne, a former detective inspector who once consulted on one of his TV series. Hawthorne wants Horowitz to turn his “real-life” cases into books, and eventually gets him to agree. Their first joint investigative venture concerns the strangulation of Diana Cowper in her London home, mere hours after she visited a funeral parlor and made detailed arrangements for her own funeral. (In one amusing metafictional scene, Hawthorne criticizes Horowitz for inaccuracies in chapter one, an omniscient third-person account of the funeral home visit.) An interrupted text Diana sent to her son shortly before her death leads the duo to look into a long-ago hit-and-run tragedy that claimed one twin child’s life and seriously injured the other. Deduction and wit are well-balanced, and fans of Peter Lovesey and other modern channelers of the spirit of the golden age of detection will clamor for more. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

Rory Kinnear flawlessly performs this entertaining metafiction in which the real mystery writer Anthony Horowitz is persuaded by a fictional investigator called Hawthorne to shadow him as he solves a murder so Horowitz can write about it and make them rich. This is mad fun, especially if you are a fan of "Foyle's War," "Midsomer Murders," or other of Horowitz's work, since real movie folk (Spielberg!) from Horowitz's actual life become part of the story. It's a fresh and diverting spin on the classic scenario: eccentric-but-brilliant master sleuth with earnest-but-bumbling sidekick. Sherlock Holmes, anyone? (Horowitz has written that character, too.) Kinnear is so good you forget he's there; instead you feel as if you've seen this as a movie on some screen in your intercranial theater. B.G. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine