The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Book Review

"Diana Cowper had planned her funeral and she was going to need it. She was murdered about six hours later that same day."

The Word is Murder will be released on August 24th. It is written by Anthony Horowitz and published by Century.

Anthony Horowiz takes a risk with this one, with a unique narrative where he inserts himself into the story. Some reviewers have loved it but I'm not sure it's paid off. However, The Word is Murder is still an intriguing thriller with a lot of twists and a somehow blank yet engaging detective.

BLURB
A wealthy woman strangled six hours after she’s arranged her own funeral.

A very private detective uncovering secrets but hiding his own.

A reluctant author drawn into a story he can’t control.

What do they have in common?

Unexpected death, an unsolved mystery and a trail of bloody clues lie at the heart of Anthony Horowitz's page-turning new thriller. 

SPREAD THE WORD. THE WORD IS MURDER.


I haven't read any Anthony Horowitz before. He's best known for his Alex Rider children's books but he has also written the new Sherlock Holmes books, which I want to read. He's also worked on lots of crime TV programs, like Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, so he clearly knows what he's doing. However, while the plot and mystery is great, I just kept stumbling over the narrative.

Horowitz puts himself into the story, with fired detective Daniel Hawthorne asking him to write a book about the murder he's investigating. He makes himself narrator and assistant detective. It was very confusing; I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't, this wasn't necessarily a problem but it did slow down the reading. My main issue is that Horowitz kept going off from the story to talk about himself. Yes, we want a bit of background to the narrator, but these asides went on too long and to be honest felt a little narcissistic. Yes, we know you're very successful, and you've met Stephen Speilberg, you don't have to keep banging on about it.

He also came across as somewhat arrogant yet bumbling; I suspect this was something he intended, as he very much plays the Watson character to Hawthorne's Holmes. I just felt a disconnect all the way through, it's a clever idea but didn't quite work as I didn't warm to his character.

Having said that, I did enjoy the snippets about how he works, purely because I'm a writer myself and it' always interesting to see how others write (not that I'm anywhere on a level with him I might add).

The actual plot of The Word is Murder is what kept me reading. It's an intriguing concept; a woman is murdered on the same day that she organises her funeral, and is well plotted and planned out. There's a perfect amount of twists without it getting tired, and the murderer was suitably unexpected and unstable.

The characters, especially the victim, were well-formed and layered. I liked trying to get into her head space, and there's a lot of back story.

Hawthorne is a good creation (or is he a real person? I'm still not sure). He has Sherlock Holmes style brilliance but none of his suave. In fact, he's very unlikeable and Horowitz even discovers that he is homophobic. It's interesting to read a character who is on the side of the 'goodies' but with distinctly unpleasant characteristics. He's also a mystery, and still mostly remains so by the end of the book.

The Word is Murder is a great mystery that would have worked a lot better if it wasn't so overwhelmed with Horowitz's own past and musings.

My Rating: 3/5

I received a copy of The Word is Murder via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

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