A woman organises her own funeral - and then, a few hours later, is murdered. Coincidence? Special consultant to the popo, Daniel Hawthorne, is brought in to assist, and joining him is… Anthony Horowitz?! Buh, you mean the author of this book?! The word is… meta! And, y’know, whodunit?
I didn’t love The Word is Murder as much as A Line to Kill unfortunately (I know, I’m reading this series out of sequence - it’s fiiiiine) but it’s also not bad. The mystery itself isn’t that compelling, there’s a lot of pacing issues, most of the cast are unlikeable bleeps, and the ending is an embarrassing farce, but the writing is solid, Hawthorne and Horowitz’s relationship is fun, as is the meta angle in general, and the book does notably improve in the second half (except for that ending).
The premise itself is a bit shaky. I don’t know anything about the Metropolitan police but there’s nothing that crazy about the death of the murder vic, besides the coincidence. Would they really need a special consultant? Don’t they have enough detectives on staff to handle something like this? And then this idea that the consultant would bring in a writer he has a distant connection to to then write it up, without worrying about revealing case details or anyone stopping them… it just feels tenuous to me. We’re meant to suspend disbelief while also believing that this would all happen because the author and people in his life are part of the story. Horowitz wanted to write a modern day Holmes/Watson and went about it in an awkward fashion.
In the same breath, I continue to enjoy the prickly chemistry between Hawthorne and Horowitz, both of whom are the best characters in the book. And having Horowitz himself as a character, rather than another fictional character in the Watson role, allows him to write about the professional writer’s life, which were some of the best parts of the book. In particular, the meeting he has with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson about the aborted second Tintin movie, and Horowitz’s pushy agent Hilda.
But still, the murder itself isn’t especially enthralling, and there is a definite pacing issue. There’s no real urgency in finding the killer - the investigation seems to play out at a leisurely speed - and both Hawthorne and Horowitz at different times mention that Hawthorne is paid by the day, so he’s deliberately drawing things out so that he gets paid more. Fair enough, but that doesn’t make for a gripping narrative either.
It doesn’t help that quite a significant chunk of the book is one big red herring. It’s not a total waste as that part did have its moments and it added layers of intrigue to the overall story, so I can see why it was kept in, but, combined with the meta-writerly stuff, the effect is fairly leaden.
I’m gonna get into details of what else irked me about the novel, some of which is spoilery, so SPOILERS here on out.
The misdirection would’ve been clever if the clues to solving the murder had been included in the first 100 pages or so but there’s actually no way of figuring out whodunit because one of the characters has another name, and you’re given information concerning this name only towards the end. This isn’t a huge problem for me - I’m not someone who tries to solve the puzzle early, Pat - but it does feel like a bit of a cheat, indicative of weak plotting.
The murderer’s reveal was even more clunky because Horowitz falls back on cliches. The villain immediately starts monologuing, explaining every aspect of the mystery and their motivations, behaving almost cartoonishly evil, and then gets stopped just in the nick of time. Please. Extensive expositional info dumps like that are the unfortunate bugbear of this genre.
The motivations aren’t convincing either. The murderer killed the girl who was involved and then waited years before exacting revenge on the true focus of his obsession? And the idea that he was going to lure Damian Cowper back by killing his mother felt silly. Damian has family in England, as well as an expensive London flat, and he probably would’ve landed a movie role shooting in London at some point, so he would’ve come back eventually - why not just wait for him to return and murder him then? Why draw him back now? Why the urgency? There clearly wasn’t any as he killed the girl years ago and has been waiting ever since. The whole thing is far too contrived.
That said, no ending makes or breaks a book, for me anyway, and there’s enough here to make it an unevenly enjoyable read. The story does get better as it develops, and the novel is quite engrossing for the last 100 pages or so (ending notwithstanding), and I always enjoyed the meta breaks sprinkled throughout. Horowitz’s writing is accessible and sharp, and even if none of the supporting characters were much fun to read about, the entertaining exchanges between Hawthorne and Horowitz made up for it. I would recommend A Line to Kill as the better book in this series, but, if you’re a fan of these novels like me, it’s still worth checking out The Word is Murder, just don’t have high expectations for what is a fairly underwhelming modern murder mystery.
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