Book: The Word is Murder

Author: Anthony Horowitz

Release Date: June 5, 2018

Genre: Mystery

This is my second book by Anthony Horowitz and this one was much different than the first I read.

I read Moriarty a couple of years ago and loved it.

I already knew before reading this book that Horowitz was brilliant but after reading this one, which is the first of a series where he incorporates himself into a fictional story, I have decided that he is even more brilliant.

A little background on Horowitz: He is the creator and writer for some well-loved UK mystery shows included Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, Injustice, and New Blood, among others. He is also the author of 50 books, including the popular teen spy book series, Alex Rider, Magpie Murders, and two Sherlock Holmes books.

I truly wasn’t sure what to think of this book when I first started it and there was a point where I thought he was going to go on a rant about a social issue and really considered putting the book down. In the end, he didn’t go on the rant I thought he would.  I also couldn’t put the book down for the very reason Horowitz says in the book he couldn’t walk away from the case he becomes wrapped up in – we both had to know who killed Diane Cowper.

I wanted to know how she died too and it was why I was up more than one night/morning until 1 in the morning reading it.

The book opens in a way that ensures that there is no way you’re going to put it down.

A woman walks into a funeral parlor and plans her own funeral. Later that day she is murdered.

Daniel Hawthorne is a former cop who becomes the consultant on the case. Horowitz has worked with him before as a consultant on a show called Injustice and now Hawthorne wants to know if  Horowitz wants to write a book about him. As a quick reminder, the show is real, Hawthorne is not. There is a lot of blending of fact and fiction in this book and there were times I wondered which was which.

I knew there was some truth when Horowitz wrote about meeting with Hollywood heavy hitters like Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.

Horowitz was actually supposed to write the screenplay for the sequel to The Adventures of TinTin and it’s unclear why the project never took off but in this book the theory is that Hawthorne interrupted Horowitz’s meeting with Jackson and Spielberg and both of the men wandered off to pursue other projects.

When I first began reading the chapter where Horowitz started detailing his involvement with Tintin and what the comic and the movie was about, etc., I was bewildered. What did this have to do with who murdered Diane Cowper? Why did I care? Why was he writing about this?

It turned out to be one of the funniest chapters in the book and it made sense because it showed Hawthorne’s character – specifically how clueless he is about current events and current entertainment (he didn’t even know who Spielberg was) and how absolutely inconsiderate he is of others.

From the book:

‘Who are you?’ Spielberg asked.

Hawthorne pretended to notice him for the first time. ‘I’m Hawthorne,’ he said.

‘I’m with the police.’

‘You’re a police officer?’

‘No. He’s a consultant,’ I cut in. ‘He’s helping the police with an investigation.’

‘A murder,’ Hawthorne explained, helpfully, once again sitting on that first vowel to make the word somehow more violent than it already was. He was looking at Spielberg, only now recognising him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Steven Spielberg.’

‘Are you in films?’

I wanted to weep.”

As the book progresses, and especially after this incident, Horowitz isn’t sure he wants to take on the project and continues to be unsure, even as he begins tagging along with Hawthorne as Hawthorne investigates Diane Cowper’s case. Hawthorne is extremely unlikeable, rude, and judgmental. Horowitz wants to walk away but if he does, he won’t know what happened to the woman whose death may have been related to an accident she was involved in a decade before.

There are tons of red herrings in this book. There are also tons of amazing descriptions by Horowitz, especially of Hawthorne.

Here is a couple I highlighted on my Kindle:

“He had the same silken quality as a panther or a leopard, and there was a strange malevolence in his eyes – they were a soft brown – that seemed to challenge, even to threaten, me. He was about forty years old with hair of an indeterminate colour that was cut very short around the ears and was just beginning to turn grey. He was clean-shaven. His skin was pale. I got the feeling that he might have been very handsome as a child but something had happened to him at some time in his life so that, although he still wasn’t ugly, he was curiously unattractive. It was as if he had become a bad photograph of himself. He was smartly dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie, the raincoat now held over his arm. He looked at me with almost exaggerated interest, as if I had somehow surprised him. Even as I came in, I got the feeling that he was emptying me out.”

And another one:

“Hawthorne nodded. I always knew when he was about to go on the attack. It was as if someone had waved a knife in front of his face and I had seen it reflected, for an instant, in his eyes.”

One aspect of the book I didn’t enjoy was toward the end when Horowitz added in this very long explanation and speech by one of the characters. It went on for pages and I really didn’t understand the point of it at all, unless it was to throw the reader off the scent. He did this a few times in Moriarity as well and I didn’t enjoy it. He seemed to forget he was writing a book and not a speech for one of the characters in the screenplay for one of his shows.

That  one disappointment and a few other rambling explanations didn’t take away from the book overall, however, and I’m looking forward to reading the remaining three in the series. My husband says the third book is the best. A fifth book in the series is also being written from what I read this week.

I enjoyed this book as a reader, but also as a writer. Horowitz had some interesting personal insights about the writing process that I could relate to especially now that I am writing mysteries myself.

Here are a couple of the quotes I especially enjoyed:

“The hardest part of writing murder stories is thinking up the plots and at that particular moment I didn’t have any more in my head. After all, there are only so many reasons why anyone wants to kill someone else. You do it because you want something from them: their money, their wife, their job. You do it because you’re afraid of them. They know something about you and perhaps they’re threatening you. You kill them out of revenge because of something they knowingly or unknowingly did to you.”

And

“The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It’s almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes.”

If you haven’t gathered, I would recommend this book if you enjoy a good mystery. As for it’s clean rating, it is not clean in many ways but it is also not overly graphic, there is no sex, and the cursing is minimal but when it does happen it is the big ones (think the one that starts with “f” – if your mind will even allow you to think of it.)