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The Word is Murder

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

SHE PLANNED HER OWN FUNERAL. BUT DID SHE ARRANGE HER OWN MURDER?

New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty, Anthony Horowitz has yet again brilliantly reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes.

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.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who's as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz.

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.

A masterful and tricky mystery that springs many surprises, The Word is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.

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  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 26, 2018
      This spectacular series launch from bestseller Horowitz (Magpie Murders), a scrupulously fair whodunit, features a fictionalized version of himself. The author’s doppelgänger—who, like his creator, has written a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The House of Silk, and a Tintin movie script for Steven Spielberg—is approached by Daniel Hawthorne, a former detective inspector who once consulted on one of his TV series. Hawthorne wants Horowitz to turn his “real-life” cases into books, and eventually gets him to agree. Their first joint investigative venture concerns the strangulation of Diana Cowper in her London home, mere hours after she visited a funeral parlor and made detailed arrangements for her own funeral. (In one amusing metafictional scene, Hawthorne criticizes Horowitz for inaccuracies in chapter one, an omniscient third-person account of the funeral home visit.) An interrupted text Diana sent to her son shortly before her death leads the duo to look into a long-ago hit-and-run tragedy that claimed one twin child’s life and seriously injured the other. Deduction and wit are well-balanced, and fans of Peter Lovesey and other modern channelers of the spirit of the golden age of detection will clamor for more. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Rory Kinnear flawlessly performs this entertaining metafiction in which the real mystery writer Anthony Horowitz is persuaded by a fictional investigator called Hawthorne to shadow him as he solves a murder so Horowitz can write about it and make them rich. This is mad fun, especially if you are a fan of "Foyle's War," "Midsomer Murders," or other of Horowitz's work, since real movie folk (Spielberg!) from Horowitz's actual life become part of the story. It's a fresh and diverting spin on the classic scenario: eccentric-but-brilliant master sleuth with earnest-but-bumbling sidekick. Sherlock Holmes, anyone? (Horowitz has written that character, too.) Kinnear is so good you forget he's there; instead you feel as if you've seen this as a movie on some screen in your intercranial theater. B.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 30, 2018
      Voice actor Kinnear sounds playfully peevish and impatient when portraying the narrator of Horowitz’s hugely entertaining whodunit, adding to the novel’s sense of fun. Daniel Hawthorne, a respected former Metro policeman who has been hired to consult on a strange murder case, pressures popular novelist Anthony Horowitz (a fictionalized version of the author himself) to write a book about him and his investigation. Diana Cowper, a well-to-do widow, has been strangled in her London residence, and Hawthorne and Horowitz’s investigation leads them to the scene of a long-ago tragedy at a seaside resort in Kent and another murder. Horowitz isn’t the only “real” person to appear in the story; directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson appear and, along with an assortment of colorful suspects, are smoothly enacted by Kinnear. Horowitz’s mystery is as cleverly constructed as the classic whodunits of the golden age, populated by fascinating characters and peppered with fair-play clues. Kinnear’s faultless delivery is completely in tune with the author’s ability to mix murder and mirth. A Harper hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • ATOS Level:5.2
  • Lexile® Measure:740
  • Interest Level:9-12(UG)
  • Text Difficulty:3-4

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