I have just finished reading The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz, nineteen years after it was first published!
It surprised me that it took so long to discover this book. After all, Anthony Horowitz wrote one of my all-time favourite TV shows, Foyle’s War.
Anthony Horowitz was a guest on a TV chat show, and he was asked to read an excerpt from A Deadly Episode, a book that had just been published.
This, and the fact that a local bookshop was displaying a signed copy in its window, prompted me to buy a copy of A Deadly Episode.
I hadn’t realised this was the latest book in a six-book series, and it’s closely connected to the first one.
So, that's why I have just finished reading The Word is Murder.
The Word is Murder features Detective Daniel Hawthorne and the author, Anthony Horowitz.
This makes the book a strange mixture of fact and fiction, a murder mystery interwoven with an autobiography.
Horowitz's role is similar to Dr Watson's in the Sherlock Holmes books.
Their relationship doesn't get off to a good start, but 'develops' over the course of the book.
In the first chapter, Diana Cowper visits Cornwallis and Sons, a funeral parlour, to arrange her own funeral.
I'm sure that you can guess what happens next, but in the unlikely event that you can't, there's a spoiler on the front cover of the book!
Anthony Horowitz doesn't like being called Tony. He's always been Anthony or, to some of his friends, Ant.
He is the author of the bestselling teen spy series Alex Rider, and was also responsible for creating and writing some of the UK's most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.
He has also written two Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; a James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis; and Magpie Murders, a Top Five Sunday Times bestseller.
Magpie Murders has also been adapted into a television series.
He is on the board of the Old Vic Theatre, and was awarded an OBE for his services to literature in January 2014.
The Word is Murder was the first in a series of crime novels with Detective Daniel Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz as the main protagonists.
