Anthony Horowitz - The Word Is Murder

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An entertaining read

I enjoyed The Word Is Murder, although I did have reservations about it.  It has a structure which I would expect to dislike: Anthony Horowitz casts himself in a central role in what purports to be a true-crime story, but is, of course, completely fictional.  This leads to a lot of knowing stuff about how he is going to write the book and the whole thing is as much about how he writes his work as it is about the crime story.  Horowitz does it very well and, to my surprise, I liked those aspects of the narrative.

Set in London in 2011, the story is of a woman who walks into an undertaker's office to make arrangements for her own funeral, and is then murdered a few hours later.  The case is investigated by the police, of course, but also by Hawthorne, and ex-police officer with whom Horowitz has worked as a consultant on TV screenplays.  Hawthorne wants Horowitz to write a book about his investigation, and he eventually agrees to become his amanuensis and sort of assistant.  This all works pretty well as a device; it allows Horowitz to have fun introducing aspects of his own life (which may or may not be true, of course) and also allows him to have his cake and eat it rather.  There's a good deal of "if I was making this all up, I wouldn't have done it like this" sort of stuff – which again, I was surprised to find I rather liked.  (You can tell, by the way, that he has been writing Sherlock Holmes stories, as Hawthorne's methods, if not his character, have a very Holmesian feel.)

It's not all great; the ending is pretty silly, to be honest – with the killer explaining everything to the captured investigator whom he intends to kill as a crowing cliché.  Also, there are a few characters who are made to resemble real people closely enough to be disconcerting.  A vain, manipulative actor called Damian who is about to star in a new series called Homeland?  The physical description doesn't fit and he went to the wrong acting school, but… Or a director who "wishes to remain anonymous," about whom Horwitz then gives such full, extraneous detail that she is plainly identifiable as Janet Steel.  It's odd, and it's something I didn't like.

Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable, readable book.  Place and characters are well evoked and I found it a very entertaining read for most of its length.  Recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)