By Dennis Fischman

Anthony Horowitz is an industry unto himself. On TV, he has written or produced half a dozen series, including the magnificent historical mysteries Foyle’s War and several episodes of Poirot and Midsomer Murders (the latter, on since 1997 and still running). In YA literature, his fifteen books about teen super-spy Alex Rider have also become a series on the small screen. Horowitz’s adventure stories set in our own day are not limited to adolescents. He has written literary mysteries about the middle-aged publisher Susan Ryeland and the way she solves murders by understanding the fictional character Atticus Pund. He has also done homage to Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. Not content with being a prolific author, in The Word is Murder, Horowitz becomes a fictional detective himself. To be exact, Horowitz makes himself the foil to a detective, the Watson to a Holmes.

His lead character is disgraced former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne, a misanthropic, homophobic, casually racist, grumpy and selfish man who happens to be a brilliant detective. Hawthorne has a proposition for Horowitz. “Write a book about my investigation,” Hawthorne suggests, “and we’ll split the take fifty-fifty.”

‘The Word is Murder’ by Anthony Horowitz
Harper, 2018,
400 pages

In the book’s terms, this answers the perennial question of why someone who is neither in the police force nor a private detective gets involved in solving a murder. Horowitz, the character, does it for the story and the money.

And it is a good story. As the publisher summarizes it: “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. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home.”

Are you intrigued? I was. It’s a provocative premise, and it’s carried out with the typical panache this author brings to his work.

I did like this book, but I didn’t love it. It’s a mystery only a writer could love. One writer in particular: Anthony Horowitz.

This book is the author’s chance to show off. Not only does he make himself the bumbling foil to the brilliant but irascible detective (an act of false modesty a blind man could see through), he also revels in his mastery of ALL the conventions of the genre.

A crime in the past linked to murders in the present? Check. Hidden identity? Check. Philandering husband? Check.

People with financial motives and other people with emotional motives to commit murder? Bumbling regular cops shown up by consulting detective? Psycho killer? Check, check, and check.

We get it, Anthony Horowitz. You know how to write mysteries. (You also know famous people and have no reluctance to drop their names on every occasion.)

There’s a reason that authors are cautioned not to make themselves too obtrusive in their books. You threw caution to the wind, and some readers enjoyed it. I have to say I liked reading the book too, and I enjoyed discussing it with my murder mystery book club at the Somerville Public Library (a/k/a the Boston Murder Squad).

But only one person could love it, because he loves himself. Not wisely, but too well, as the Bard would say. If you can put up with Horowitz’ authorial self-indulgence, reader, you will enjoy this book. I am planning to try out the next one in the series, too.

Dennis Fischman is a member of the Somerville Public Library’s Mystery Book Club and an inveterate reader.