**A Guardian ’Best Thriller of the Year!’**
The New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever and inventive mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes, investigating a case involving buried secrets, murder, and a trail of bloody clues.
A woman crosses … and a trail of bloody clues.
A woman crosses a London street.
It is just after 11am on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service.
Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.
Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material.
As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz—a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories—suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery. But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes he’s at the center of a story he can’t control . . . and that his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own.
A masterful and tricky mystery which plays games at many levels, The Word Is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.
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Anthony Horowitz does it again, with The Word is Murder, turning the genre in on itself in a “meta” way. If you are a fan of his television work (Foyle’s War on the one hand, Midsomer Murders in the campier camp), you’ll enjoy this mystery.
Highly recommended! This novel is so original and entertaining. Mystery fiction wrapped up with the actual author’s life. I had to read it twice.
I just love books about books and writing, particularly when the blur the fourth wall into a fuzzy mess… Anthony Horowitz is a master of language and does a magnificent job creating worlds that are just slightly off-kilter but feel all too real even when the events being described are anything but. If you don’t know his work, you really should – and this book is a great start because it’s about him and his previous books (sort of) and the meta- way that Horowitz blends the murder and the backstory and the surrounds is spot-on brilliant and exceptionally entertaining.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a bit slow at the beginning, I almost stopped reading it, then it picked up and I couldn’t put it down. It kind of reminded me of the show “Castle”, the author has a LOT of knowledge of random things that somehow tied to what was going on in the book. I would recommend it.
Unfortunately, this book is DNF @ 50%.
I was so looking forward to my first book by Anthony Horowitz as I had heard so many good things about him and it’s hard not to miss all of the buzz around Magpie Murders. So, when I got The Word is Murder, I was beyond excited. I couldn’t wait to see what the buzz was all about.
Sadly, this book didn’t work for me. I don’t know if it is the writing style or this story in particular, but the plot was just soooooo. slooooooow moooooving. And quite frankly, I don’t even care who killed Diana Cowper.
I also didn’t like how the author made himself a character. It really didn’t work for me and I didn’t really see how it helped the actual story at all. It just seemed like Horowitz wanted an opportunity to tell people who may not know who he is, who he is. And again, I just really didn’t care. To me, it simply did nothing to enhance the story and I found myself skim reading through most of it because it just all seemed so pretentious.
Anyway, I am in the CLEAR minority here, as there are tons and tons of 5 star reviews. So you may want to check it out for yourself. Just because it didn’t work for me, doesn’t mean you won’t like it.
Thank you to HarperCollins and Edelweiss for my copy.
Good mystery
Anthony Horowitz has done it again — given us a clever, fast-paced read…and this time he’s in the story. Highly original.
I listened to the auiobook and think I enjoyed it more than I would have if I read it on my own.