There is no doubt that Horowitz plots excellent crime strories but I found the use of himself as a character in this novel really off-putting and I couldn't really get past that. Disappointing.

The review for The Word is Murder will come live on my blog, Amazon account and Goodreads on 24/08, when I will post below the links for it.

I started reading The Word is Murder expecting it to be similar in style to Magpie Murders, which I enjoyed, although I thought the ending rather predictable. But I was wrong - except for being a murder mystery as well, the similarities between the two books stop there. In this very unique and interesting novel, Horowitz blurred the lines between fiction and non-fiction to the point where I had to do some googling to figure it out.

The plot is really intriguing: a wealthy middle-aged woman arranges her own funeral and hours later, she is murdered. Who killed her? Did she know she was going to be murdered? If not, was organizing her funeral a coincidence? The unemployed detective Hawthorne is short on money, and when he gets hired to investigate the murder of Mrs. Cowper, he decides to turn it into a book - which is where Horowitz (yes, the author) comes in.

But it feels that the murder is only half the story, where the other half is Horowitz' life & career.

Horowitz talks extensively about his writing process and his career, which sometimes I found interesting and sometimes bothersome. It felt like a book about the process of writing the book and this meta situation was both intriguing and frustrating - I wished at times that there was less Horowitz and more murder mystery. At the same time, I do enjoy getting to know more about writers and their writing process, but I would then rather read an interview and some articles about it. I don't want it to be half of a murder mystery book. If you're a long-term fan of Horowitz, I think you might actually enjoy this very much! He talks extensively about his Alex Rider series, about the script-writing for murder mystery TV series and so on. I particularly wasn't too keen on such a level of detail such as he presented for that.

The character construction felt a little flat to me. They all seemed like taken from a Catalog of Whodunit Suspects (is there such a book?), and even giving them backstories rather extensively didn't feel enough to give them actual complexity and personalities. They were all likely to have murdered Mrs. Cowper. I found specially the women from the book quite flat. The detective Hawthorne is written to be unlikable, and then we have Horowitz in a Hastings/Watson position of the less intelligent companion who guides the reader away from the clues and into wrong conclusions (no offence at all for the "less intelligent" part meant, those characters are normally quite intelligent, just not as much as the detective, especially to provide a contrast and admiration for the detective himself).

But never once was I impressed or interested in Hawthorne at all, and both the clues and the process of uncovering the mystery were everywhere, not following the kind of structure I prefer - but that is just my personal preference after years of reading Agatha Christie. I prefer my murder mysteries nice and cleanly presented. This book felt more like a real-case mess, with lots of relevant and irrelevant information. So that is quite the charm of it. It was just not my cup of tea.

I was going to give it 2 stars, but I honestly think the creativity and originality of the execution, plus the fact that I did not really know who the murderer was until it was revealed, definitely deserved the extra star.

I suspect this book will do very well, and I look forward to reading other books by Anthony Horowitz! 

Veredict: This book is an intriguing mix of classic whodunit with non-fiction. If you love reading about writers and how they write, you'll enjoy this one, especially if you've been a fan of Horowitz for a while. It's quite hard to put a line between fiction and non-fiction on this one and it's what makes it so unique!

Having greatly enjoyed, “Magpie Murders,” I was thrilled to receive, “The Word is Murder,” to review. Author Anthony Horowitz has shown that he is adept at writing many different genres of books, but it is clear that he was certainly meant to be writing anything but this particular novel. For, you see, Mr Horowitz himself is very much the narrator of this novel and he tells the story as it happens; which is a clever literary device and throws the reader immediately into the action.

In his varied career, we learn that Anthony Horowitz has written many television scripts and one of the advisors he consulted was a former detective inspector with the Met; a murder specialist, since thrown out of the force, named Hawthorne. Hawthorne is something of a throwback, with his shabby suits, secretive air and unpleasant prejudices. However, he also does consulting on unusual cases and he asks the author to accompany him on his most recent investigation and write a book about him.

Horowitz should be concentrating on a script he needs to show to Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson (the scene involving these two men is worth reading the book for alone), plus he has other projects clamouring for his attention. Still, he finds himself drawn into the strange murder of Diana Cowper. A widow in her sixties, Diana Cowper planned her own funeral before being murdered only six hours later. Mother to famous actor, Damian Cowper, involved with the theatre herself, wealthy and well connected, it seems too much of a coincidence that she walked into a funeral parlour to discuss her own burial on the day she was killed. Hawthorne and Horowitz immediately begin to investigate her life; including a tragedy she was involved in nearly ten years previously.

This is a wonderfully unusual crime novel. Horowitz’s voice is ever present in this book, as he bemoans the fact that Hawthorne is calling all the shots, yet begrudgingly admires the fact that he always seems able to uncover the secrets beneath the facts. There is an intriguing plot, lots of twists, some wonderful characters and Hawthorne himself, who I would love to see in another book. For, although Horowitz spends much of this book worrying about whether anyone will read this, he needn’t have been concerned. If I loved Horowitz’s previous crime novel, I have to say that I adored this. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

n the initial stages the reader could be confused thinking this book is factual, and not fiction. The mixing, or fusing, of the genres is a clever tool. Horowitz himself is a key character in the story. His relationship with a somewhat disgraced detective is introduced through a description of his own working life as a crime writer. The twists and turns of both the crime plot and the machinations of the world of publishing makes for a novel challenge for both the author and the reader. It true detective story style Horowitz has delivered another excellent page turner.

This is a fun and playful take on the Golden Age detective story albeit set in contemporary London. The narrator ('Anthony') masquerades as the author in terms of his career trajectory and gets called in by a retired 'consultant' police detective to write a book, this book, about his investigation of the murder of a woman who is killed the day she arranges her own funeral.

There are plenty of nods to the classics: Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings; and some interesting insider gossip about TV series and acting.

At heart, of course, like so many Golden Age crimes, the motive is completely unbelievable - but it's a fun, light-hearted romp to get there. Perfect summer holiday entertainment.

To be posted on Amazon on publication

From this renowned writer comes an unusual setup for the plot of this murder mystery. Description not over elaborate - but enough to keep a reader interested and the plot moves at a quick pace, realistic details. Seems written with television in mind, where more can be added with visuals. Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this novel pre-publication.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a copy of this wonderfully strange book for an honest review. Well it is not giving any of the plot away to say I have never read anything quite like it. For a long time I have admired Anthony Horowitz ability to produce stories for the twenty-first century using earlier authors characters but making them albeit set in the original time period more realistic and more graphic.
Here he has ventured into absolutely new pastures and placed himself into the story. I is a jolly good read and a definite page turner. If your going on a trip even better the book and Antony Horowitz will keep you company and the time will fly.
I suggest you don't take a sneak look at the ending let it unfold and enjoy the fun.

I am so thrilled to have discovered this book. This is a very different murder mystery where the author of the book becomes the narrator of the story. It was odd at first where the author turned narrator and the detective discuss writing a book about the murder that has taken place. I was drawn into it and quite liked it.
Now on to the story. A woman walks into a funeral home to plan her own funeral and 6 hours later, she is dead. Horrowitz mentions many times in the book that Agatha Christie is his hero and you can see it in his writing in the book. The multiple characters with storylines of their own, a second murder, chatty characters, well hidden clues with all ends tied up at the end. At the same time, Horrowitz is the Watson to Hawthrone's Sherlock.

This is a very interesting and entertaining read. Highly recommended.

An attractive, well-heeled woman enters a classically-minded funeral parlour in London, and makes plans for her own funeral. Within just a few hours, she's had lunch, engaged with business affairs – and been killed in her own home. Could anyone have foreseen the service to have been needed so quickly? That's the initial premise of this thriller, this most intriguing mystery, and if you want to read it – which is something you really should do – with no surprises, you should not read the book's blurb, or even the authorial biography, and perhaps not even the following. Just go in blind, and wait for the surprises – that start, as it happens, with chapter two…

Chapter two proves that the contents of this book are written by Anthony Horowitz. You know the chap, founder of Midsomer Murders, creator of Foyle's War, continuer of the Sherlock Holmes canon, and so on. And he's writing this in the first person, because he himself is a character in the drama. There is a man, Hawthorne, who once was a murder detective with the police but is so no longer, but who has been drafted in as an advisory consultant and investigator on the strange case of the woman with her almost self-fulfilling trip to the funeral parlour. And he's decided that, what with the strangeness of the case, the brilliant mind he bears with him, and with Anthony Horowitz's writing nous, a bestseller can become of it that will benefit both men, on a 50/50 basis. This is the result – the word from the crime author's mouth about how he jointly investigated and solely wrote-up a true crime novel about a real fictional crime.

In the end, what you have is a perfect amalgamation of the old (a chap involved in witnessing a crime being solved, right there to write up about it) with the new. It's never black and white that it's a current revision of Holmes and Watson, but it's there for you should you so desire. I desired a book that harked back to the distinctive cleverness and traditional traits of the detective story, where a small group of the highly suspicious all defend themselves against one murder charge. And that's certainly what I got here, and the quirk of having the author give the best supporting actor performance really did not feel like it was tagged on to make it a richer or longer book. It just was a clever, droll and routine-busting read, and I have to encourage genre fans – were they to need it – to turn here and have fun.

This is the first Anthony Horowitz book I have read, and I was drawn into he story straight away. For the first few pages that is, until I was flung out of the novel I thought I was reading and into what appeared to be work of non-fiction. It was discombobulating, and I didn't like it at all. Until I did (after reading about another 50 pages)! I thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of the book (still not sure if it is fiction, nonfiction or a hybrid) and very much would like to read more books like this one. I know this review will be baffling to read but please read the book, and you will understand why I have written this review in the way I have.

I really enjoyed this book.
A woman walks into an undertakers to arrange her funeral and later that day she is murdered. There are other murders in the book but to reveal them would be unfair.
The story is told through the eyes of the author who has been requested by the ex policeman (now a consultant policeman) to write a book about himself and the investigation. For me this worked really well because I felt I was seeing the clues at the same time as the author and like him trying to guess the murderer before the policeman.
All the characters are totally believable.
A great read.

Fabulously funny and original book which featured the author as one of the main characters in a murder mystery. It is written in 1st person narrative.

The book is a clever mixture of fact and fiction - I even found myself Googling the author's life, work and some of the events and characters to find out which bits were real and which were made up, often to be surprised at how much was based on reality.

There was plenty of humour - the interrupted meeting with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson was superbly farcical and the eventual and inevitable perilous confrontation with the perpetrator of the crime(s) was way over the top. I did work out who the 'baddie' was part way through (there were several clues and hints) but did not guess the whole story.

In summary, I found this book very entertaining and rather difficult to put down.

This is a very interesting book, written in the first person by Anthony, full of encounters with real people. When I first started reading it I thought I was working my way through the introduction until I realised that this was the actual book. I'm not sure that this type of genre has been done before, but for me it was a winner, I couldn't put it down. Now that I've finished the bookI'm still not sure if the story was based on truth or fiction, as again, real people were mentioned as part of it. It's highly original with a fascinating murder that becomes more and more complex as the book progresses. It had me hooked from beginning to end.

Horowitz and Hawthorne Invesigate. After this novel tale, let's hope there's more to come from a unique pairing! 5 star.

Last year I listened to Magpie Murders on Audible and thought that Anthony Horowitz is definitely an author to follow. Read this book in three days - an absolute joy to read. Really good plot and an entertaining storyline. The characterization was both strong and amusing - and Horowitz isn't scared to make a little fun of himself, which made the book even stronger. I can see lots of different readers enjoying this and would heartily recommend it.

I wasn't sure if I liked this at first, the strange mix of supposed fact that you know is fiction is a little bit hard to get used to, but something about it kept me reading avidly until the end. The interactions between Hawthorne and Horowitz sparkle with dry wit and the scene where the author is in greatest peril is adrenaline spiking , the fact that the book is written in the first person makes it all to easy to empathise with his fear and helplessness. Like all good mysteries there are red herrings and false clues throughout but I enjoyed trying to work out who the killer was alongside the author.

The Word is Murder is a whodunnit thriller with a metafictional twist from the acclaimed author of Alex Rider and a variety of crime and thriller stories. A former police detective draws a writer into the case of a woman who walked into an undertakers and planned her own funeral only hours before she was murdered. The deal is, the case is written about by the writer and the profits split 50/50. Before they can worry about that, however, they have to solve the case, following a trial of clues that lead around theatrical celebrity and an old car accident. The thing is, the writer is Anthony Horowitz, and he’s never wanted to get involved with a real crime before.

Horowitz has already written Sherlock Holmes and James Bond stories, proving that he can take other people’s characters and fit them into his own books, but in this novel he takes himself, his own writing life, and plenty of other real life details and turns them into a self-aware detective story. After the initial chapter that describes the murder, it becomes quickly apparent that the narrator is Anthony Horowitz, following in a writing tradition of fictionalising yourself and your own life (not dissimilar to Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park, though that gets a lot weirder by the end). The narrator is unreliable from the start, describing the process of gathering information, deciding what makes it into the book, and cutting out things from endless expletives to boring and unnecessary detail.

The detective character, a former policeman turned consultant for both investigations and the writing of crime drama, is set up not so much through his personality, but by how difficult it is to make him a likable character. Other elements, such as the famous young actor whose roles are a mash-up of the big names from British acting in recent years, add to the meta quality, keeping a vague sense that this could almost not be fiction. These quirks give The Word Is Murder a fresh feel, though it still has a complicated whodunnit plot to keep it gripping too.

Horowitz has created a novel where he plays a modern day Watson, a crime writer caught up in a real investigation and making a few faux pas along the way. Maybe the conceit will seem unnecessary to some, but The Word Is Murder will undoubtedly exhilarate not only crime and Horowitz fans, but anyone who enjoys the sense of metafiction and fourth wall breaking found in books by authors like Lemony Snicket, Bret Easton Ellis, and Martin Amis amongst others.

This book isn't your normal murder mystery. In fact, it took me quite by surprise after the first chapter when the author of the book becomes the narrator of the story. I was slightly put off at first, it was odd and I didn't like it, But as the story continued, I got drawn in and actually I couldn't put it down.
A woman walks into a funeral home to plan her own funeral and 6 hours later she is dead. Anthony Horrowitz takes on a brilliant journey to uncover how this woman died, as it was never believed to be just a burglary gone wrong. He is the sidekick to a man named Hawthorne, who is an ex Police detective, who is working with the police again, trying to uncover the mystery surrounding the death.
Horrowitz mentions several times in the book that Agatha Christie is his hero, and you can definitely see this coming out in his work. This book has all the right things in it for a classic murder story - the second death, the story that is leading you down the garden path until right at the end when it all becomes clear. He even has the typical Poirot rounding up when he gathers the people present in a room to explain whodunnit.
The story makes you think it is real, however I'm still not too sure if it is or not. If it is, the names have definitely been changed, but if it isn't, and it's all a work of the authors imagination, then it is very, very cleverly done.

A woman gets done in, her actor son is slashed to death and the author of The Word is Murder is nearly found six feet under. Detective Hawthorn is on the case, only he's not a detective anymore 'cos he got the sack. Instead, Hawthorn decides to engage Anthony Horowitz, the author, to spend time and money helping him find the culprit and write a book about how he solved the crime. It's a whodunnit Agatha Christie style, but I'm afraid it was a little too easy to guess whodunit before the reveal. Well written, pacy and dare I say, old-fashioned. Reckon it'll be on TV soon.

What a fascinating book! A story about a well known writer (Mr Horowitz himself) writing how he is approached by an ex detective for a story, and then what happens as the story and research start to reveal itself..

I've never read a book that is effectively being written and researched as you read it. A book where a writer has to help solve a crime in order to write his book. And he gets into some situations let me tell you! The story within the story within the story is a woman who plans her own funeral and then ends up dead some six hours later. That thread was interesting enough but add the other layers and it was just WOW! I just loved the banter between Horowitz and Hawthorne! They did make me chuckle.

This was surreal in a lot of ways - what's real, what's not? - but very compelling. I'm going to think about this and then write a longer review.

Highly recommended Horowitz!