Anthony Horowitz - The Sentence Is Death

Rating: 4/5

Review :
A very enjoyable read

I enjoyed The Sentence Is Death – probably rather more than its predecessor The Word Is Murder. It can be read as a stand-alone book, but it may help to set the background if you read The Word Is Murder first.

Anthony Horowitz, narrating as though these events really did happen to him, is again roped in to “help” and write the story of the enigmatic ex-detective Hawthorne as the police call him in to assist with the investigation of the murder of a divorce lawyer in his Hampstead home. Needless to say, a complex plot ensues involving an old caving accident and another death, as Anthony tries to make sense of it all while Hawthorne makes Delphic remarks and asks apparently irrelevant questions.

It’s a lot of fun. There is more than an echo of the Holmes/Watson partnership here – which Horowitz acknowledges with plenty of references to Holmes stories – and it works very well. He also has fun at the expense of literary pretension and some of the clichés of detective fiction, but at bottom it’s a well constructed mystery which is, as you’d expect from Horowitz, very well told. (And I’m pleased to say that, while the usual slight suspension of disbelief is necessary, the ending is much less far-fetched than in the first book.)

This is a fun read which is also rather gripping and holds some entertaining puzzles, too. Recommended.

(My thanks to Cornerstone for an ARC via NetGalley.)