I got to page 271, of 419 and decided I wasn’t wasting any more of my precious time on this book. It is way too long, and I found I just didn’t really care about the mystery. The usual banter between Hawthorne and Horowitz isn’t zinging in this book, because they spend virtually no time together. And I came across a really obvious error, that shouldn’t have slipped past the keeper: at the scene of the second death, while Hawthorne is looking at the body still in situ, the police officer informs him that the victim had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and ’there was about a quarter of a bottle of Scotch in his bloodstream’. How could they possibly know that before the pathologist had run all their tests? Anyone who watches crime tv or reads crime novels knows they are forever waiting for the toxicology results after the autopsy - this body was barely cold and still where it was found!
I felt this was written in a hurry, and the results are not great. Disappointing.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Leslie Manville read this next instalment of the Susan Ryeland mysteries. She’s the perfect choice, particularly as she plays the character in the tv adaptation of Magpie Murders.
This is another ‘book within a book’ mystery, which is a little harder to follow as an audio as it would be in paper format, but it didn’t lose me.

This is the third instalment of Horowitz’s series, where he plays the role of the rather hapless sidekick to his brilliant, but annoying, fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne. The other titles are The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. Horowitz is worried that he will soon run out of titles with grammatical allusions!

This time we find them invited to a literary festival held on a remote island and before you can say ‘Agatha Christie’, a murder is committed and everyone’s a suspect. As Horowitz complains, ‘I had come to Alderney in the hope that I would be introducing Hawthorne to my world: books, lectures and all the rest of it. But instead, I had once again been dragged into his’.

Using a writing festival as the setting gives Horowitz plenty of opportunity to wax lyrical about the shared love of literature: ‘I think there’s something wonderful and reassuring about the idea that in the rush of modern life people will still come together and sit for an hour in a theatre, a gymnasium or a giant tent simply out of a love of books and reading.’ Obviously, anyone reading his book will be in total agreement.

This is an easy book to read; a real page-turner. But Horowitz can also be insightful. As he notes: ‘there are victims in every murder story, and not just the ones who are killed’. Just like Poirot and Holmes, Hawthorne waits for the final pages before the big reveal, and the reader is left wondering ‘why didn’t I work that out?’ And that’s the reason we all enjoy a great whodunit!

I went about reading this series in a roundabout way - I read the second book (The Sentence is Death) first! However, it didn’t affect my level of enjoyment one jot.

Horowitz has a lot of fun with this series. He writes in the first person, cleverly weaving fact with fiction. His protagonist, disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne is fictitious, as are the murders and the suspects. But the details surrounding Horowitz’s life are real: his involvement in the film industry, his previous books and even his family are the real deal.

Horowitz finds himself coerced into playing Watson to Hawthorne’s Holmes, accompanying him as he investigates the mysterious murder of a woman who had arranged her own funeral the same day! An intriguing plot ensues, with plenty of red herrings and wrong turns to keep you guessing until the end.

One of the pleasures of this series is being given a birds’ eye view of how tv shows and films are created and the writer’s role in this process. As Horowitz explains: ‘Being the writer on a set is a strange experience. It’s hard to describe the sense of excitement, walking into something that owes its existence entirely to what happened inside my head….So I’ll sit down in a folding chair which never has my name on the back. I’ll watch from the side. I’ll chat to the actors…And as I sit there, I’ll take comfort in the knowledge that this is all mine. I am part of it and it is part of me.’

Hawthorne is not a likeable character. In fact he is a bit of cypher. Horowitz says ‘If I had sat down to write an original murder mystery story, I wouldn’t have chosen anyone like Hawthorne as its main protagonist. I think the world has had quite enough of white, middle-aged, grumpy detectives.’ Like I said, Horowitz really is having fun with all the familiar crime tropes and I do like his clever play on words in his titles: The Word is Murder; The Sentence is Death.

The Word is Murder is a real page-turner, which will keep you guessing to the end. Great fun.

Although Horowitz claims he has ‘no wish to turn myself into a character, and a secondary one at that: the perennial sidekick’, that is exactly what he has done in this series. He is Dr. Watson to Daniel Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes.

The set-up is thus: Hawthorne is a disgraced former police detective, now working as a private investigator. He has chosen Horowitz to be his biographer, which means, of course, Horowitz is involved in all his cases. Following in the tradition of Holmes, Hawthorne is a difficult character, seemingly unaware of his negative effect on everyone he encounters: he’s constantly rude and politically incorrect, making it very difficult for Horowitz to portray him in a sympathetic light. And yet, we still do warm to Hawthorne and his eccentricities.

Horowitz has cleverly woven fact with fiction; real with imaginary, which can at times be a little distracting, but overall makes for an intriguing read. While acting as Hawthorne’s sidekick, Horowitz is also working on the shoot of the latest episode of Foyle’s War (he is the writer and creator of same). This gives the reader a fascinating glimpse into the not-so-glamorous world of television and all its unforeseen difficulties. I will now watch Foyle’s War with some insider knowledge up my sleeve!

Horowitz’s real-life work colleagues and family also star in the book. Although Jill has wife ‘has made it clear that she’s uncomfortable being a character in my book’ he argues ‘unfortunately, truth is what it’s all about. She is the main character in my life’ (my italics). Well, that’s just damn cute, don’t you think?

This is a whodunit written in the classic tradition of Christie and Conan Doyle. There are red herrings aplenty and a labyrinth of twists, turns and coincidences to keep you guessing. It’s a jolly good romp!

This is a very clever whodunnit in the style of Agatha Christie. The real gift here is that you get two mysteries for the price of one! A book within a book.
Horowitz is well know for his Alex Rider series for young readers, and of course for penning the stories for Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. His writing style is cinematic; very visual and descriptive; you can immediately picture each scene he creates.
This is not high literature. However, it is very accomplished and for anyone who reads murder mysteries, you are going to have a lot of fun picking up all the puns, anagrams and other ‘in’ jokes that are smattered through [both] stories.
Perfect holiday read.
Enjoy!