Review: CLOSE TO DEATH, Anthony Horowitz

• 
• This edition supplied by my local library
  
• Published by Penguin Random House 2024
• ISBN 9781529904246
• 415 pages 
• Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery #5

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunnit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound.

Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong, and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.

It is the perfect idyll, until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, gaggle of shrieking children, and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and quickly offend every last one of the neighbors.

When Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator they can call to solve the case.

Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect? 

My Take

I'd forgotten the structure of my first experience of this series - the fact that the author actually makes an appearance in the novel as himself. That makes reading the novel a bit of a challenge - part of the narrative is in the third person, retelling and embellishing what investigator Daniel Hawthorne has told the author; and part of it is in the first person as the author steps onto the canvas himself and converses with the characters.

The plot is in fact quite complex, lots of solutions are on offer to the two murders that take place, and there is eventually a third murder that takes some believing.

In Acknowledgements in the final pages the author tells the readers that this was a complicated novel to write, and that while it was finished in 2020, for one reason another it wasn't published till 2024. 

Enjoy!

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• 4.5, THE HOUSE OF SILK
  4.7, MAGPIE MURDERS
  4.3, THE WORD IS MURDER -Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery #1

About the author

You've probably come across the work of Anthony Horowitz without realising it:

Anthony Horowitz is the author of the bestselling teen spy series, Alex Rider, and is also responsible for creating and writing some of the UK's most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.

He has also written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; a James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis; and his most recent stand-alone novel, Magpie Murders, was a Top Five Sunday Times bestseller.

He is on the board of the Old Vic Theatre, and was awarded an OBE for his services to literature in January 2014.

Review: THE WORD IS MURDER, Anthony Horowitz

• this edition published by Penguin Random House UK 2017
• ISBN 978-1-78-089685-4
• 387 pages
• Other Good Reads reviews

Synopsis (author website)

It’s been two years since Injustice aired and Detective Daniel Hawthorne needs cash. Having gotten himself fired from his job at the Metropolitan police, Hawthorne decides to approach Anthony Horowitz. He’s investigating a bizarre and complex murder and he wants Anthony to write a book about it, a bestselling book of course, with a 50/50 split.

The only catch is they need to solve the crime.

But award winning crime writer Anthony Horowitz has never been busier in his life. He’s working on Foyle’s War and writing his first Sherlock Holmes novel. He has a life of his own and doesn’t really want to be involved with a man he finds challenging to say the least. And yet he finds himself fascinated by the case and the downright difficult detective with the brilliant, analytical mind. Would it be really such a crazy idea for Anthony to become the Watson to his Holmes? The Hastings to his Poirot?

Should he stick to writing about murder? Or should he help investigate?

A classic crime for the modern reader, The Word is Murder is a whodunnit to end all whodunnits.

My Take

Somehow I just wasn't prepared for the author himself to be acting as the narrator.  And I never could decide how much was fiction. My best guess is that the author is trying to show how differently he works as an author, when compared to a top-notch detective. The author sets up a murder in a plot, describes the scene for us, and then lays clues about the murderer whose identity he already knows. The detective observes the scene after the fact and then interprets what he sees, and follows the clues. In THE WORD IS MURDER both detective and author are central characters and interact with each other. So even the dialogue between author and detective becomes interesting. Hawthorne, the detective, tries to put the author in his place, demanding that he be see but not heard. The author, Horowitz, refuses to be kept in his box, and often demands to ask his own questions.

It is probably a novel that would benefit from more study and from robust discussion in a book group.

My rating: 4.3

I've also read
4.5, THE HOUSE OF SILK
4.7, MAGPIE MURDERS

Review: MAGPIE MURDERS, Anthony Horowitz

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 1819 KB
• Print Length: 464 pages
• Publisher: Orion (October 6, 2016)
• Publication Date: October 6, 2016
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B01EG5HLR4
• Text-to-Speech:  

Synopsis (Amazon)

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway...

But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.

From Sunday Times bestseller Anthony Horowitz comes Magpie Murders, his deliciously dark take on the cosy crime novel, brought bang- up-to-date with a fiendish modern twist.

My Take

MAGPIE MURDERS is one of those "peeling an onion" books: There are two main stories, one contained inside the other, but at the same time Anthony Horowitz pays tribute to those successful writers of cozies, particularly those who have managed to sustain a credible detective over a number of titles. Here is his take on an Agatha Christie-style book, and the reader can't help but recognise that Atticus Pund has a lot in common with Hercule Poirot.

Both stories have a time of denouement: we eventually find out who was responsible for the murders in Alan Conway's novel, and then the finale of the story in which editor Susan Ryeland in the central character.

So the book also contains some interesting reflections on writing cozies, why readers like them, why the television public can't get enough of murder, and how writers often come to hate their main protagonist, even when killing them off is the equivalent to killing the golden goose. There is even a passage when the editor Susan Ryeland wonders how those protagonists, among them Morse, Rebus, Poirot, Wimsey, Marple, Poirot, felt when they realised their time was coming to an end.

So there was a lot to like about this book, a lot to think about, although I found it slow going at the beginning, and it is quite long.

A warning for Kindle users: on my paper-white kindle, the book that Susan Ryeland is reading, Alan Conway's Magpie Murders, is rendered as a "softer" print, which I found quite hard to read. It is almost as if the Kindle is trying to display it as grey. It wasn't something I noticed when reading on the iPad app, but there various parts of the book were rendered in a different font, indicating a different "voice", a different part of the book.

My rating: 4.7


I've also read
4.5, THE HOUSE OF SILK

About the author (from Amazon)

Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear — "My father was a very secretive man," he says— so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.

A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.

Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.

Review: THE HOUSE OF SILK, Anthony Horowitz - audio book

• Unabridged audio recording available from Audible.com
• narrated by Derek Jacobi
• Length: 10 hours 23 minutes
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited
• Original novel published 2011
• Source: I bought it

Synopsis (Audible)

THE GAME'S AFOOT... It is November 1890 and London is gripped by a merciless winter. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are enjoying tea by the fire when an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221b Baker Street.

He begs Holmes for help, telling the unnerving story of a scar-faced man with piercing eyes who has stalked him in recent weeks. Intrigued by the man's tale, Holmes and Watson find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston. As the pair delve deeper into the case, they stumble across a whispered phrase 'the House of Silk': a mysterious entity and foe more deadly than any Holmes has encountered, and a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society itself.

With devilish plotting and excellent characterisation, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz delivers a first-rate Sherlock Holmes mystery for a modern readership whilst remaining utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is back with all the nuance, pace and powers of deduction that make him the world's greatest and most celebrated detective.

My Take

I'm not one generally for "coat-tails" books - that is, books where the central character was not created by the author, but I couldn't resist something read by Derek Jacobi. And of course Anthony Horowitz is pretty well known as a television dramatist, in particular for his work on Midsomer Murders and Murder in Mind, and episodes for Poirot and Murder Most Horrid.

I think Sherlock Holmes followers will enjoy THE HOUSE OF SILK. Sherlock Holmes is long dead and Watson recalls how he very nearly died during this case. Poor old Dr. Watson is writing at the end of his life recalling a story from twenty five years before, set in London in the late 1890s.  Anthony Horowitz was given access to the estate of Conan Doyle and also carefully studied many of the original stories. It certainly has an authentic feel to it, although I am far from being a Sherlock Holmes expert.

Jacobi does, as we would expect, an excellent job of the narration.

My rating: 4.5

Anthony Horowitz' website.