The Word Is Murder
by Anthony Horowitz
Murder can be a strange, dangerous seduction. A good whodunit delivers gore shrouded in just the right amount of intrigue to create a powerfully tantalizing force. With The Word Is Murder, Anthony Horowitz solidifies his place among the ranks of celebrated British mystery writers, seamlessly stitching together fact and fiction to create an enticing and sinful masterpiece.
Part of The Word Is Murder’s allure stems from its narrative structure. Horowitz writes himself as a character in the book. Classic murder mysteries dabble in reality, but hold it at arm’s length — the murders can be too gruesome, the detectives too eccentric, the settings too kitsch. But with Horowitz as the narrator, the book takes on an element of unnerving realism. He refers to real TV shows, books, and films and embeds his characters in them. As the fictional version of himself, a layperson helping along a brilliant detective, Horowitz authentically reflects our own innate tendency to draw unfounded conclusions based on our desire to solve an enticing mystery.
On a perfectly average London morning, middle-aged socialite Diana Cowper visits a South Kensington funeral home — to plan her own service. Six hours later, she is dead in her own home, strangled with a curtain cord.
The fictional Horowitz — Anthony — has no attachment to the murder until he is approached by disenchanted ex-police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a consultant on the case. The gumshoe wants Anthony to write about his investigative pursuits regarding the Cowper case, but his abrasive exterior is so off-putting that the writer nearly refuses.
Nearly. Because Anthony, like all of us, cannot withstand the seduction of an unsolved mystery. And he cannot pass up the chance to become a part of the team that uncovers the truth.
Embroiled in the plot are ostensibly arbitrary clues: an old tragedy in a seaside town; Diana Cowper’s egotistical movie-star son Damien, who seems to act as much offscreen as he does on; Damien’s grin-and-bear-it girlfriend Grace; and a years-old disappearance of a young woman. But as the unlikely crimefighting duo discover more pieces of the puzzle, Anthony realizes just how little he knows about his partner-in-justice.
It may be easier to describe Hawthorne by what he isn’t than what he is. His only defining characteristic: his caustic temper. He has no endearing quirks, no Holmesian eccentricities to make him more sympathetic and his audacity more forgivable. He is intentionally secretive regarding his personal life, and consequentially, Hawthorne becomes a secondary mystery of the book.
But the real pleasure of The Word Is Murder is its trap-setting. Like Anthony, who has misplaced confidence in his ability to independently solve the case, Horowitz allows us to believe we are clever and have solved the case. A greater pleasure than believing we have solved the murder is realizing that we have fallen into a trap laid to perfectly blend in with its surroundings.
It is no accident that murder mysteries have been popular for decades. If Horowitz makes the Anthony-Hawthorne pair into a series, Hawthorne will no doubt join Holmes, Poirot, and Marple in the lexicon of all-time great fictional detectives.