One bright spring morning Diana Cowper walks into a funeral parlour to arrange her own funeral. Six hours later she is dead, strangled in her own home. It can’t be a coincidence…can it? Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne – who is technically no longer with the police but still assists with particularly challenging cases – is called in to investigate. This is to be an investigation with a difference, however, because Hawthorne has enlisted the services of author Anthony Horowitz to write a book about the case.

Horowitz has never written a true-crime book before and admits to being much more comfortable when writing fiction such as his Sherlock Holmes sequel The House of Silk or the Alex Rider young adult series. It is with some reservations, then, that he agrees to write Hawthorne’s story, but as he accompanies the detective while he interviews suspects and searches for clues, Horowitz is drawn into the investigation despite himself.

The two have very different visions for their book; Horowitz believes in using artistic licence to tell a story that people will want to read, but Hawthorne is adamant that he should report only the facts, leaving nothing out that could be of significance. The author also tries in vain to get to know the detective, to shape him into a character who will stand alongside Holmes and Poirot, but the other man remains frustratingly enigmatic:

“Well, if I was going to write about you, you’d have to tell me. I’d have to know where you live, whether you’re married or not, what you have for breakfast, what you do on your day off. That’s why people read murder stories.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Yes!”

He shook his head. “I don’t agree. The word is murder. That’s what matters.”

I started to read The Word is Murder with very high hopes, having loved Horowitz’s previous novel, Magpie Murders (one of my favourite books of last year). I wasn’t disappointed; this is another great book! In fact, like Magpie Murders – but in a different way – it is almost two books in one. We have the story of Horowitz and his relationship with Hawthorne and then we have the murder investigation itself. I’m aware that I’ve said very little so far about the latter – and I’m not going to say much more, other than that it is a very clever, tightly plotted mystery with plenty of clues, suspects and red herrings. Thanks to Hawthorne’s insistence on everything being written down, most of the clues are there from the beginning and the rest are at least revealed early enough for us to guess the solution before Horowitz does. I have to admit, though, that I was slow to put them together and didn’t come close to solving the mystery!

I should probably make it clear that Diana Cowper is a fictional character – she wasn’t really murdered six hours after arranging her own funeral and Hawthorne, who is also fictional, wasn’t really brought in to investigate. Anthony Horowitz, however, is obviously a real person and so The Word is Murder is a curious blend of fiction and non-fiction. He is not the first author to use themselves as a character in their own novel, but I’m not sure if anyone else has done it in quite the same way!

Although the passages in which Horowitz describes his various writing projects, his appearances at book festivals and his views on literary agents are a bit of a distraction from the central plot at times, his main role in the story is as a sort of Watson-style sidekick, and this aspect of the novel works very well. As for Hawthorne, he has quite an unpleasant personality, being humourless, secretive, pedantic, and – to Horowitz’s disgust – homophobic, but I found him a fascinating character, precisely because he is so unattractive. They are an unlikely pairing but there is plenty of potential here for more Hawthorne/Horowitz mysteries, I think – I would certainly be happy to read them, anyway!

Diana Cowper walked into the funeral parlour to arrange her own murder – everything was planned down to the last detail. An environmentally-friendly burial, a not-particularly-religious service. And it turns out that the plan was necessary – because six hours after leaving the appointment, Diana Cowper was murdered.
Hawthorne, an ex-police detective and currently an investigating consultant, is asked to look into the case, but he sees an additional opportunity. Why not have the investigation chronicled by an author? An author who Hawthorne has been advising on procedure for the author’s latest TV show. You may have heard of that author – his name is Anthony Horowitz…
OK, and I thought Magpie Murders was hard to review without spoiling too much. In fact, the simple existence of Magpie Murders actually makes this review harder.
Ignoring that book for a moment, what you have here is exactly the sort of book that this blog was created to try and find. Yes, we’ve meandered away from that notion over the years – well, I meandered and a lot of you followed me – but the core idea was to find classic crime fiction being published today. And this is right up there with the best.
A central intriguing idea, engaging characters, a multi-layered fairly clued mystery – and the sign of a great mystery novel, there are revelations about events that are not central to the tale that are also fairly clued – and an entertaining narrative voice. Horowitz the narrator is not shy of chatting about relevant aspects of his work – the book is set after the supposed end of Foyle’s War, i.e. before the Cold War episodes – or, indeed, name-dropping or plugging his other books. Of course, this is exactly what an author would do – but whether you choose to think this is Horowitz embodying what an author would do, or just plugging his other books is up to you. But it’s all good fun.
What it isn’t is what readers of Magpie Murders might expect – namely a piece of meta-fiction playing fast and loose with the notion of an author telling a story of a story that he was involved in. There are some nods – the Acknowledgements section is littered with fictional bits and bobs as well as, presumably, real ones – but this is actually a surprisingly straightforward twisty turny classic-style mystery.
Horowitz again demonstrates his ability to weave a complex and fair-play mystery plot – I wonder, if he had been asked to do the new Poirot books, would there have been such an uproar? – and the book bounces along nicely, with one stunning incident at the halfway point that I was really impressed by. Admittedly, I thought the “who” was a bit too obvious, but not the “why”, even though everything is there in plain sight to be overlooked by the reader.
The Word Is Murder is released in the UK by Penguin Random House UK or Cornerstone or possibly Arrow Publishing – I can’t get the hang of these imprints within imprints in publishing. Anyway, it’ll be in bookshops from Thursday 24th August. Why not go out and get it, because it’s Highly Recommended.

My son is a huge fan of Horowitz's Alex Rider series, but I have to confess I didn't actually notice the author name when I chose this book and it wasn't until i was into chapter two that the penny dropped!

Here he uses a very clever, first person device, to take us through a new departure in story-telling for him, and it works a treat.

The murder mystery, the annoying Holmes-sian detective, the clues not spotted and the characters brilliantly drawn...all lead us through a story that's light and entertaining but has quirky elements that add an extra degree of enjoyment to reading it.

You will ask yourselves, countless times - 'is this bit true' and 'is this person real' , as Horowitz leads us through a novel littered with anecdotes and references to his real life that might, just might, be accurate. Oh how I wish!

Very entertaining...but where can he take it next, and should he? I'd love to read more adult novels this well written, but I think this format would struggle to capture the reader for long.

Yet again, another fantastic and original book from Anthony Horowitz! I'm a massive Horowitz fan and no matter how many books of his I read, I'm never disappointed. I only read my first book by him a year ago (in fact, it was the first book I ever reviewed on my blog) and I've been trying to get my hands on as many of his books as possible since!
The Word is Murder is completely unique, in that Anthony himself helps the detective to solve the crime. I loved this, and I loved reading about little details from his life like the process of script writing for Foyles War and references to things like Midsomer Murders (which if you've read previous reviews you'll know I'm obsessed with!)
This book is an addictive and unputdownable page-turner and Horowitz's distinctive voice constantly comes through. I often found myself chuckling at his comments and I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style.
The story is packed with red herrings and a totally unexpected and excellent twist. The characters are exceptionally well developed and make for a masterfully crafted novel.
Overall, I'm giving The Word is Murder 5 out of 5 and adding it to my Five Star Favourites Shelf. It was clever, compelling and completely unique. I'd wholeheartedly recommend it and I can't wait to go and buy my physical copy!

The Word is Murder is eccentric and totally brilliant – like reading an Agatha Christie novel if Agatha Christie placed herself at the centre of the action and engaged with Sherlock Holmes. It is a long term reader’s dream novel almost quite literally. In this case Mr Horowitz does just that, telling his own (?!?) story, getting sucked into a murder mystery of the classic locked room type with a modern twist and keeping us all guessing all the way through.

Quirky and extraordinarily readable, The Word Is Murder has an ironic, indelible tone that sucks you straight in – alongside little gloriously entertaining commentary on the authors real life, we also have Hawthorne (the Sherlock Holmes of this story) with his throwback personality, his acerbic witty asides and his intelligent mind, alternatively dazzling and frustrating Mr Horowitz as he tries to write a book he has no control over.

The mystery itself is gloriously twisty with proper clues and proper red herrings – in a way it feels like a homage to those crime stories of old, but now in a very modern setting – it is endlessly charming and utterly engrossing, I devoured it with all the fervour of the religiously converted.

Loved it. Delightful, funny and completely alive on the page The Word Is Murder is a distinctive, unforgettable novel with a huge touch of class.

Highly Recommended.

at first, the opening seemed formulaic but soon we are utterly drawn in as the mysterious former police detective and the writer, Horowitz himself (entering the novel) explores why and how a person who was seemingly admired by all, harboured a deep past that the detective, an eccentric himself, requires a novelist's discerning eye as to character's help. Intriguing idea and i was captivated ... really recommend .. I hope we watch it on telly one day!

I am a sucker for an unusual narrative so this book had me interested from the first few pages. A mystery book that the author doesn't know the identity of the murder, or if the murder will even be solved. I finished this book 5 hours ago and I'm still trying to discern fact from fiction. Definitely recommend!

The Word is Murder feels like a classic British murder mystery from one of Britain’s best loved writers.
However it has one unique aspect – it’s central character and narrator is the author himself. In either an odd or highly inventive approach the story is narrated by Anthony Horowitz himself – presumably a fictionally constructed version of him. This could serve to make the events seem more realistic and add an air of the classic murder mystery to the book – think of the way Dr Watson narrates the Sherlock Holmes books.

However, even Conan Doyle created a fictional narrator and the slow start to to the book in which the narrator describes his work in TV and books could feel self indulgent, if not disconcerting. The concept does help us think more critically about the genre, and how we frame what we read. As a murder mystery goes it was clever and engaging – and a challenge, since no-one likes a crime they can solve straight away!

An old woman plans her funeral and is murdered the same day – the initial concept is intriguing and when we find out that ten years ago, she killed a young boy in a hit and run – everything gets much more interesting.

The book is well written – with interesting characters, and all the right elements of the genre. You will be intrigued and hooked by the plot. While there are darker aspects themes to the book it is largely as lighthearted as a murder mystery can be. I recommend curling up with this on a rainy late summer Sunday afternoon with a good old cuppa – its a perfect, easy rainy day read.

The story…

Renowned fiction author Anthony Horowitz is approached by an old acquaintance, a jaded and disagreeable investigator, with an idea of a new, true crime novel. A particularly perplexing murder has just been committed, and Hawthorne is convinced the story could be a big hit, providing they can solve the case.

My thoughts…

This book has one of the most unique concepts of all the books I’ve ever read. Even now I’m still slightly baffled by it. Leaving aside the story for the moment, the idea of having Horowitz write himself as a character in his own novel is very odd. There are so many personal details in the book that must be autobiographical – for example, detailed descriptions about his own past as a scriptwriter for TV programme Foyles War. In addition to this, the fictional murder storyline is entwined into these real life details. At least, I assume that this storyline is fictional – even now I’m not quite sure.

Horowitz’s relationship with Hawthorne, the detective, and the issues that he comes up against while writing a true crime novel – such as the tendency to cut irrelevant details and airbrush Hawthorne’s character into one that would be more relatable for his readers – also form a key part of the narrative. It’s a perspective that takes some getting used to, and means that the book we get isn’t a crime novel, it’s a book about someone writing that crime novel.

The main plot of the novel focuses around the murder of Diana Cowper, which is made all the more unusual by the fact that she had visited a funeral parlour that very same day to plan for her own death. There’s a rich and varied cast of characters and suspects, each of whom is hiding something. There’s also a traumatic accident in Diana Cowper’s past, a self-obsessed Hollywood actor son and a disgruntled housekeeper – in short, everything that makes a good crime novel.

As Horowitz is writing this book after the events took place, he is an omnipresent narrator, and occasionally drops in little hints and reflections on events as the story progresses. This also makes him inherently unreliable, as he makes executive decisions on what details he should leave out or make more palatable to his audience. As readers, we’re playing catch up, attempting to read between the lines and decipher the truth about what happened before the big reveal at the end.

In conclusion…

Just as in his previous novel, Magpie Murders, the book is filled with hidden clues and elaborate red herrings. Overall, despite the unusual style, which I must admit that I did find a little distracting, I did enjoy this book. I failed at identifying the murderer and his motives, which I always think is a sign of a good detective novel.

With The Word is Murder, Anthony Horowitz has succeeded in writing an intriguing murder mystery novel about Anthony Horowitz writing a novel about an intriguing murder. It’s an unusual approach that, while somewhat distracting at first, actually serves to enhance the drama and tension of the story, which concerns the death of one Diana Cowper. Now, while her murder no doubt came as a great shock to Diana, it was all the more surprising to the public at large because at eleven o’clock in the morning on the day she died, Diana walked into a funeral parlour and planned her burial service.

It being somewhat unusual to arrange the disposal of your body just prior to your murder, the police force called in their top consultant, a former police officer named Daniel Hawthorne, to help with the investigation. It is through him that Anthony Horowitz became involved in the case, since Hawthorne had served as the police advisor on a television series written by Horowitz. To Horowitz’s displeasure, Hawthorne had stayed loosely in contact and later came to the conclusion that he would make an excellent subject for a book, which he believed should be written by Horowitz. While Horowitz is not keen to work with Hawthorne, he is certainly intrigued by the murder of Diana Cowper as well as rather excited by the opportunity to test his own deductive skills and attempt to identify the killer before Hawthorne does.

The Word is Murder follows Hawthorne and Horowitz as they dig into Diana Cowper’s background and attempt to locate any likely suspects from among her nearest and dearest. The story is narrated by Horowitz, he being the writer after all, in an engaging fashion, although certainly at the beginning of the novel there seemed to be an overabundance of insight into his writing life. However, once the investigation into the murder is in full swing, his asides and reminiscences seem less distracting and, in fact, often help to move the story along. The mixing of fact and fiction also allows Horowitz to have a little fun at the expense of the people in his life, perhaps most notably his agent and his wife. A number of famous faces are also subject to a spot of gentle lampooning, with the meeting between Horowitz, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson (and unwanted extra guest Hawthorne) being particularly cringe worthy.

Yet, although The Word is Murder perhaps features more than its fair share of reality, it is the plotting of the (fictional) murder that is all important in this kind of crime novel and, happily, Horowitz has put together a cleverly twisting mystery featuring plenty of suspicious characters and more than a few red herrings. Trying to solve the crime alongside Horowitz himself (as his theories are quickly shot down by Hawthorne) is a lot of fun and, while the clues are certainly there, the identity of the killer is far from obvious. Hawthorne is a great detective (and Horowitz is not too bad), but he’s not a very likeable character (Hawthorne that is). Actually, he’s irritating, rude, dismissive, self-opinionated and overly secretive (still talking about Hawthorne here), but he’s certainly determined to ensure that justice is served.

The Word is Murder is an unusual murder mystery that might initially seem rather hard to engage with, but it is worth persevering as Horowitz and Hawthorne combine their skills to form a beguiling crime-fighting duo. It is a cleverly plotted as well as highly entertaining book that should cause readers to exercise their little grey cells in an effort to identify the murderer of Diana Cowper.

Whilst reading this I imagined Anthony chuckling away while he was writing it and there were many times when I joined in, laughing out loud at his very funny comments - at times self-deprecating at other times distinctly waspish. For example, visiting the scene of the crime, he observes in the victim’s living room:

‘..the thick-pile carpet with its floral pattern etched out in pink and grey...the crystal chandelier, the comfortable faux-antique furniture, the Coutry Life and Vanity Fair magazines spread out on the coffee table, the books (modern fiction, hardback, nothing by me)...’

And in her bedroom:

‘Only a week ago, a middle-aged woman would have undressed here, standing in front of the full-length mirror, sliding into the queen-sized bed with the copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire that was lying on the bedside table. Well, at least Mrs Cowper had been spared the slightly disappointing ending.’

Despite his protestation that ‘it worries me to be so very prominent in these pages’, Horowitz writes himself front and central into the book, acting as a sort of Watson to Hawthorne, a latter day Sherlock Holmes with all the deductive and observational powers of that literary giant and the same peculiarly limited knowledge of other aspects of life. A running joke is that Hawthorne never introduces Horowitz when they visit witnesses or explains why he’s there - and rarely does anyone ask.

In one of many playful themes, Horowitz constantly reminds the reader that he would have written the book differently if writing a work of fiction but, of course, since this is true crime, he has to stick to the facts.

‘I looked down and noticed a stain on the carpet, marked by two more police numbers. Her bowels had loosened just before she died, the sort of detal I would normally have spared an ITV audience.’

In particular, he’s troubled that he doesn’t know enough about Hawthorne’s back story, personal life and so on to make him an interesting character in the book. After all, Horowitz is the experienced best-selling author and screenwriter, isn’t he? Surely he knows what makes a book work better than anyone?

‘If I had sat down to write an original murder mystery story, I wouldn’t have chosen anyone like Hawthorne as its main protagonist.’

But Hawthorne insists what readers are really interested in isn’t the detective but the crime – ‘The word is murder. That’s what matters.’ (Oh look what he did there, that’s the book’s title.) In fact, as if trying to push his point to the limit Horowitz goes out of his way to make Hawthorne an unlikeable character, giving some quite unpalatable views.

Horowitz revels in his role as unreliable narrator.

‘It occurred to me that I could make up my own rules. Who said that I had to write down everything exactly as it happened?‘

He cheerfully admits that he hasn’t included everything that was in the notes he took of the interviews he and Hawthorne conducted and that much of what he’s included is probably irrelevant. He also makes mischievous claims to have included vital clues in earlier scenes that will have you struggling to resist flipping back pages.

In the end, I began to find the references to his other works – books, film & TV scripts – a little too frequent, even if a lot of these were self-deprecating. I started to get the sense of being a witness to a huge in-joke. For example, his rant about literary agents directed at what appears to be his actual agent.

Having said all this, the book is hugely enjoyable and proof, if it were needed, that Anthony Horowitz is a very clever man. The mystery itself is well-plotted, liberally dosed with red herrings and false clues worthy of the author’s literary heroine, Agatha Christie.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Penguin UK, and chose to give an honest and unbiased review.

I don’t think I have ever read a book in the style that this one has been written. The narrator of the story is Mr. Horowitz himself. To start, the reader is introduced to Diana Cowper, she is making plans for her own funeral, six hours later she is dead. Then I got a little confused, what I appeared to be reading was like a C.V of the achievements of the author, this however was the lead up to the main story.

So the main story concerns Horowitz and ex police officer Detective Hawthorne. He has approached Horowitz to write a true crime book for him, it will entail Horowitz shadowing Hawthorne as he is investigating a bizarre and intriguing murder. This is where the book shows its unique quirkiness. As the case unfolds everything is recorded by Horowitz, to be later used in the book. It is during this time that we get a glimpse into the mind of a writer doing research, he is given all he needs for the book by Hawthorne. Horowitz sees clues where there are none, and Horowitz effectively guides the reader through red herrings, just as he is in the book. Hawthorne has a tenacity through HIS investigation, he is a stickler for detail and therefore will allow not artistic license. Because of this everything is relevant and is not flowery or padded out.

I absolutely adored the character of Hawthorne. He is a loner, he is annoying, does not give any personal details away, he is a character I still know little about. But what he lacks in details is made up for by the way Horowitz has developed quite a complex character, giving away odd little traits and habits. Even though Hawthorne has his own hunches and ideas, we are never given any glimpse from this charcter as to who the culprit is. For Horowitz, hispart in the story, apart from telling of his past, present and future projects and the name dropping of films, shows, actors etc, was his ability to lay himself open to being wrong and the often barbed comments from Hawthorne, they happened often, and I do admit to sniggering a few times. Even when Horowitz thinks he has an idea, Hawthorne just blows holes in them and knocks them aside. Before I got to the actual unveiling of the murderer, I still had no idea who it was. It is left to Hawthorne to explain how, when and why everything happened the way it did, very much in the way Agatha Christie would have done in her books.

This is a blend of fact and fiction that has been warped and twisted into a very addictive read. It hooked me from the very beginning and did not let go, there are stories within stories, facts, details, characters, mis-direction and false leads throughout, but it is very well put together so that it all makes sense and flows well and at a very good pace. I have found this story to be so difficult to review because I really don’t want to give anything away, if you have read this book, then you will know exactly what I mean. If you have not read this book, then go get yourself a copy, right now.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for my copy of this book. My thoughts are my own and are unbiased and honest.

As a fan of Mr Horowitz the complete absorbtion was no surprise. It is a very strange book but all the more fun for being so. It reads like a factual article or memoir but has all the hallmarks of a superbly crafted addition to the Horowitz canon. The characters are very real and the detective quite as irritating as he is meant to be. Even the improbable case, straight out of Conan Doyle, seems very real with excellent detail an location. What a fantastic writer. This is the kind of book every fan of mystery should read and every aspiring writer should read too, just to see how well it can be done.

Absolutely loved this book. It was written from such an unusual angle. It was very much in the Agatha Christie mould, but that just made it better for me, it did not do her any harm didi it?
I have always been interested in Anthony Horowitz, as when I was a school librarian, we had lots of his books in stock and they always looked interesting. How nice that he has written one for adults now. More please "Tony"!!
(hope that does not annoy him too much!)

"Diana Cowper had planned her funeral and she was going to need it. She was murdered about six hours later that same day."

Anthony Horowiz takes a risk with this one, with a unique narrative where he inserts himself into the story. Some reviewers have loved it but I'm not sure it's paid off. However, The Word is Murder is still an intriguing thriller with a lot of twists and a somehow blank yet engaging detective.

I haven't read any Anthony Horowitz before. He's best known for his Alex Rider children's books but he has also written the new Sherlock Holmes books, which I want to read. He's also worked on lots of crime TV programs, like Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, so he clearly knows what he's doing. However, while the plot and mystery is great, I just kept stumbling over the narrative.

Horowitz puts himself into the story, with fired detective Daniel Hawthorne asking him to write a book about the murder he's investigating. He makes himself narrator and assistant detective. It was very confusing; I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't, this wasn't necessarily a problem but it did slow down the reading. My main issue is that Horowitz kept going off from the story to talk about himself. Yes, we want a bit of background to the narrator, but these asides went on too long and to be honest felt a little narcissistic. Yes, we know you're very successful, and you've met Stephen Speilberg, you don't have to keep banging on about it.

He also came across as somewhat arrogant yet bumbling; I suspect this was something he intended, as he very much plays the Watson character to Hawthorne's Holmes. I just felt a disconnect all the way through, it's a clever idea but didn't quite work as I didn't warm to his character.

Having said that, I did enjoy the snippets about how he works, purely because I'm a writer myself and it' always interesting to see how others write (not that I'm anywhere on a level with him I might add).

The actual plot of The Word is Murder is what kept me reading. It's an intriguing concept; a woman is murdered on the same day that she organises her funeral, and is well plotted and planned out. There's a perfect amount of twists without it getting tired, and the murderer was suitably unexpected and unstable.

The characters, especially the victim, were well-formed and layered. I liked trying to get into her head space, and there's a lot of back story.

Hawthorne is a good creation (or is he a real person? I'm still not sure). He has Sherlock Holmes style brilliance but none of his suave. In fact, he's very unlikeable and Horowitz even discovers that he is homophobic. It's interesting to read a character who is on the side of the 'goodies' but with distinctly unpleasant characteristics. He's also a mystery, and still mostly remains so by the end of the book.

The Word is Murder is a great mystery that would have worked a lot better if it wasn't so overwhelmed with Horowitz's own past and musings.

My Rating: 3/5

I received a copy of The Word is Murder via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

Hi, and thanks so much for the chance to read this book. I didn't know anything about the book before beginning to read it, though I have very much enjoyed Anthony Horowitz's books in the past. I'm afraid it didn't really grab me, though. The premise was quite clunky, and I didn't find the question of what was real and what fiction to be very engaging. And, although the writing was perfectly good, it was also curiously flat, as were the characters. In particular, the pages of the author and the detective arguing over what should go into a book was just...boring. I don't think it helped that I was expecting a thriller, and this was the absolute opposite of thrilling. If I saw it on a shelf in a bookshop, I'd want it to be made very clear that I wasn't buying fiction.

The Word is Murder is the first in a series of crime novels by Anthony Horowitz starring Detective Michael Hawthorne

The story starts with the strangling of a wealthy woman six hours after she’s arranged her own funeral (presumed to be burglary gone wrong) and a very private detective contacting an author who met the detective when working on a television script.
The author (Anthony Horrowitz) then takes us on a journey to uncover how this woman died as the sidekick to Hawthorne - an ex-Police detective who is working with the police again.

As you may well have gathered from the brief synopsis of the start of this novel it seems to be a rather intriguing mix of fact and fiction. Some of the details seem based upon real people with the names and some details changed.
This blurring of fact and fiction adds another level to what is a very competent whodunnit with lots of twists and turns but a sense of fair play. You can see Anthony Horowitz’s background in the film & TV industry here as the style of writing is very visual but you can figure out what is going on. I suspect it may well be optioned for film & TV somewhere down the line.
I would recommend this as a good read although the blurring of fact and fiction could well irritate some readers.

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.