[Review] Anthony Horowitz: 'The Word is Murder'

The elderly Diana Cowper entered a funeral parlour to arrange her own burial. Everything was planned down to the last detail. A wise decision at her age, one can argue, but the story takes a more sinister turn when she's brutally murdered. Just six hours later.

Hawthorne, a disgraced and disgruntled ex-police detective and now an investigating consultant, is tasked to look into the case, but he sees an additional opportunity. Why not have the investigation chronicled by a famous author and earn some extra money? An author who Hawthorne has been advising on procedure for one the author’s TV shows. His name was Anthony Horowitz.

Anthony Horowitz is known for writing the scripts for (some episodes of) Poirot and (all episodes of) Foyle's War. Younger readers might recognize the name because he also writes the immensely popular Alex Rider series.

So, Anthony Horowitz, writes a thriller with himself in the role of Watson to Sherlock Holmes (or – more fittingly - Sam Stewart to Christopher Foyle). The story is set after the supposed end of Foyle’s War, thus before the Cold War episodes. Throughout the story Horowitz gives us an insight in his busy writing schedule, juggling time and means to write all the books his readers are expecting from him.

The mystery of 'The Word is Murder' is fairly well constructed. Still, a part where Horowitz writes about meeting producer Steven Spielberg and director Peter Jackson does feel like padding and gives the entire book an unnecessary show of being somewhat like a vanity project. Besides, in some parts the writing seems to lack a bit of natural flow, possibly the result of too many rewrites or - equally possible – because Horowitz was still in the process of transitioning from a young adult writer to a writer for the adult market.

The overall conclusion was that 'The Word is Murder' is a solid first try, but I will hesitate to read the second installment, 'The Sentence is Death'.

Buy 'The Word is Murder' here.