The Traveling Book Group is meeting to discuss The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz. Copies of this book are available at the library. All are welcome to join the discussion.
From Publisher’s Weekly: /* Starred Review */ This spectacular series launch from bestseller Horowitz (Magpie Murders ), a scrupulously fair whodunit, features a fictionalized version of himself.
The author’s doppelgänger—who, like his creator, has written a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The House of Silk, and a Tintin movie script for Steven Spielberg—is approached by Daniel Hawthorne, a former detective inspector who once consulted on one of his TV series.
Hawthorne wants Horowitz to turn his “real-life” cases into books, and eventually gets him to agree.
Their first joint investigative venture concerns the strangulation of Diana Cowper in her London home, mere hours after she visited a funeral parlor and made detailed arrangements for her own funeral.
(In one amusing metafictional scene, Hawthorne criticizes Horowitz for inaccuracies in chapter one, an omniscient third-person account of the funeral home visit.)
An interrupted text Diana sent to her son shortly before her death leads the duo to look into a long-ago hit-and-run tragedy that claimed one twin child’s life and seriously injured the other. Deduction and wit are well-balanced, and fans of Peter Lovesey and other modern channelers of the spirit of the golden age of detection will clamor for more. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (June) –Staff (Reviewed 02/26/2018) (Publishers Weekly, vol 265, issue 9, p)”
