The Word Is Murder (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery)

Product Information

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. This was my third adult novel penned by the talented Anthony Horowitz. They have all been great diversions paired with excellent writing. Both Magpie Murders and The House of Silk are on my favorites list. This one comes very close to both, but those wowed me just a wee bit more. I would not hesitate to recommend any of the three if you are a mystery lover! I understand there is a second in the series coming out in November, and I can’t wait to grab it and follow more of Hawthorne and Horowitz’s escapades in that one. I hope we can unravel some more of Hawthorne’s secrets next! Six hours after widowed London socialite Diana Cowper calls on mortician Robert Cornwallis to make arrangements for her own funeral, she’s suddenly in need of them after getting strangled in her home. The Met calls on murder specialist Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-DI bounced off the force for reasons he’d rather not talk about, and he calls on the narrator (“nobody ever calls me Tony”), a writer in between projects whose agent expects him to be working on The House of Silk, a Holmes-ian pastiche which Horowitz happens to have published in real life. Anthony’s agreement with Hawthorne to collaborate on a true-crime account of the case is guaranteed to blindside his agent (in a bad way) and most readers (in entrancingly good ways). Diana Cowper, it turns out, is not only the mother of movie star Damian Cowper, but someone who had her own brush with fame 10 years ago when she accidentally ran over a pair of 8-year-old twins, killing Timothy Godwin and leaving Jeremy Godwin forever brain-damaged. A text message Diana sent Damian moments before her death—“I have seen the boy who was lacerated and I’m afraid”—implicates both Jeremy, who couldn’t possibly have killed her, and the twins’ estranged parents, Alan and Judith Godwin, who certainly could have. But which of them, or which other imaginable suspect, would have sneaked a totally unpredictable surprise into her coffin and then rushed out to commit another murder?

Funny, addictive and clever, and the crime fighting duo of Hawthorne and Horowitz are as entertaining as ever. Brilliant. I can't wait for more.' Adam Handy 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.

Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of his own. Part of the trouble, perhaps, is that the characters were drawn well enough to be not particularly likable, but not well enough to be redeemable. We both thought the mystery wasn't that compelling; I mean, it was interesting enough, as was Tony's reaction to it, but perhaps because the pace of solving the crime kept getting interrupted by personal issues and digressions (Tony's Hollywood meetings, his obsession with finding out more about Hawthorne), it didn't feel like a race to finish, even after More Stuff started happening. Thank you to Anthony Horowitz, Harper/Harper Collins, and Edelweiss for the ARC. The Word is Murder will be released on June 5, 2018.

An extremely private, private detective, Daniel Hawthorne, is skilled at solving crimes by blowing up secrets and has a wealth of secrets of his own. It is a theme that emerges in the new novel. The Word Is Murder is first in a series about Hawthorne, an ex-cop turned gumshoe who seems to be straight out of central casting: ageing loner, problems with authority, smoker, secretive, divorced. But, as the novel progresses, the carapace is demolished and, Horowitz promises, the next eight or nine books (he is undecided) will provide surprising revelations. In addition, Diana is the mother of the famous actor Damian Cowper - who's currently a big sensation in America.A perfect detective novel in a unique style complete with an excellent twist!" ( Life Has a Funny Way of Sneaking Up On You) At first glance Alex Rider is a normal schoolboy who seems to be having a fairly straightforward uneventful upbringing. That is until one day as a teenager he finally realizes his true calling and that everything has been leading up to the moment where he’s to become a super-spy. After his uncle and adoptive parent, Ian Rider, mysteriously dies he’s led to discover more about what happened and the true nature of what he’s to become. Forced to attend a training program, he reluctantly goes to a special camp for spies where he learns more about what he’s to become. That’s when he realizes there’s more to things than initially meets the eye, as he discovers a plot set-up by the people he’s now entrusted with. Not knowing where to turn he has to decipher the clues left to him by his uncle and prevent a catastrophe from taking place. Will Alex be able to save the day and those around him, whilst saving himself in the process staying out of harm’s way? Can he become what he was always destined to be and fully realize his true potential as a secret-agent for the government? What will become of Alex Rider in his first mission as he goes head-to-head with none other than the ‘Stormbreaker’? Raven’s Gate While I can’t pretend to know the author or what he is like, there’s a feeling of him trying to explore his own inner world by laying it all out on paper, and ultimately for the reader, this ends up making for quite a few interesting interactions between the two, some amusing, others thought-provoking. In the end, I think few can mix reality and fiction in as appealing a manner as Horowitz did here. 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.