A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz Review

The first Hawthorne & Horowitz novel, The Word is Murder, is being adapted into a movie - but someone’s moidered the actor playing Hawthorne! Whodunit?1

Who cares?? is the better question. A Deadly Episode - the sixth novel in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series - is a sign that the series has run its course. That or Anthony Horowitz should really take a break from it until he has a worthwhile story to tell, because A Deadly Episode is absolutely fucking awful - boredom physically manifested in book form.

It takes the first 100 pages for Horowitz to get on with the actual story he started in the opening scene. The first 100 pages is tedious guff that could’ve been gotten through in no time had Horowitz not been dragging his heels to fill space and pad the book out.

Although that doesn’t really matter all that much as the premise is completely uninteresting. The in media res opening scene is pitiful in how easily you see through it, as are the feeble setups dotted throughout like the “clue” in the text thread - most readers, but especially those who’ve been following the series like me, will see through Horowitz’s limited bag of tricks by this point.

There’s a convoluted, and painfully dull, divergence later on in the form of a side novella - it’s like Horowitz can’t write a straight narrative anymore. The Susan Ryeland books - which are books within books - have ruined him and he can only stack the narratives clunkily on top of each other instead of threading them together seamlessly into one.

None of the characters are the least bit compelling, including both Hawthorne & Horowitz, about whom we continue to learn nothing - there’s a hint of Hawthorne’s mysterious past in this one but Horowitz annoyingly bottles it.

Every bleeding thing is spelled out to the reader as if they’re idiots who can’t remember any details. The writing is simplistic, the story couldn’t be more dreary thanks to some uninspired, plodding plotting - I genuinely couldn’t find a single thing that was any good about this book, and I used to really enjoy this series.

This makes 3 bad Horowitz novels in a row now (Close to Death, Marble Hall Murders, and this one). Given the regularity and speed of his books, it feels like the author is choosing quantity over quality and I can’t support that so I’m going to take a break from Horowitz for a while - maybe he’ll get better eventually, but I can’t be wasting any more time on his overlong, pointless, and unrewarding stories about nothing. A Boring Episode is the worst Hawthorne & Horowitz book - don’t bother with this unentertaining, instantly forgettable crap.