A “neighbour from hell” is murdered via crossbow in a posh London suburb. But when all of his neighbours hated him, whodunit? Hawthorne investigates - this time, from the past!
Anthony Horowitz’s fifth Hawthorne and Horowitz novel, Close to Death, is easily the least interesting one in the series yet. The plot, the characters, the plummy setting - none of it is all that compelling and the story draaaags for much of the book. I was close to sleep pretty much the whole time!
The fictional Horowitz needs to churn out a new H&H book because of his contract (which probably isn’t a million miles away from the real Horowitz’s situation either) and the novel reads as forced as its inception. Hawthorne’s run out of recent murders so they delve into the pre-partnership past for this case.
The fact that everything happened years ago takes away an element of urgency to the narrative and I’m surprised the fictional Horowitz didn’t just read up on the investigation online to find out whodunit, considering the murderer had already been identified (the reason he didn’t is probably something contrived about wanting to maintain integrity with Hawthorne).
But, despite the unusual murder weapon, it’s just not that interesting a scenario. The characters are all mundane, ordinary, upper-middle class folk whose bugbears against the murder victim are all bolshy crap: getting planning permission for a swimming pool that’d ruin their view of the garden, having too many cars blocking their driveway and so on. Y’know, really relatable stuff.
The story starts off slowly - even (Horowitz as)Hawthorne has the self-awareness to note this, but doesn’t change it; it serves a purpose though it’s still boring - and never gets going. The narrative plods along pretty much the whole time until the slightly less-tedious finale where we find out whodunit.
Hawthorne and Horowitz was Anthony Horowitz’s most reliable series in terms of quality - they were generally not bad, with the occasional standout, but none were so dull I wished it was over long before the end - until Close to Death, when I began to feel like this series had run its course.
If you’re looking for a recommendation for this series, the third book, A Line to Kill, is the best one - you don’t need to read them in order either; they’re all loosely connected but are perfectly accessible as standalones. New readers though, don’t start with Close to Death and returning readers, keep them expectations low - what a dull, dull, dull crime novel this is!
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