From the publisher: In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunnit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound.
I love Anthony Horowitz. His writing and his mysteries just work for me, and every adult book he writes is a must-read. (I confess, I don’t love his series for kids, Alex Rider.) I adored Magpie Murders, both the book and the miniseries, and I love the Hawthorne and Horowitz books. It’s fun seeing an author write himself into a series as somewhat of a clueless dolt. (When Horowitz asks Hawthorne to tell him the solution to an old murder case, Hawthorne replies, “You never know the solution, mate. That’s what makes your writing so special. You don’t have a clue.” Ha! (p. 65 of the ARC))
This book is pretty different from the previous Hawthorne and Horowitz books. In the previous books, the author has watched Hawthorne solve a mystery and then written a book about it. In this book, he writes about a murder that happened years before. So, unfortunately, the pair don’t spend much time together this time around. Still, I get it – the author needs to keep things fresh for himself and his audience.
I often don’t even try to solve murder mysteries, but Horowitz throws in so many details and so much misdirection and then makes the clues pay off, so I do try to pay attention. (No, I did not figure out what was going on in Close to Death, any more than the fictional Horowitz did.) I also enjoy how English these books are.
“I have never been a huge fan of so-called ‘locked-room’ mysteries,” complains the fictional Horowitz as the real-life Horowitz proceeds to write one. Ha! (p. 184 of the ARC) I had a bit of a hard time with this one in one respect, trying to figure out how he could actually turn this into a published book given what would need to be revealed, but that’s beside the point. I know they aren’t true crime, but clever fiction. And I know these books aren’t done because we still need to find out what happened in Reeth!
I read an advance reader copy of Close to Death from Netgalley. It is scheduled to be released on April 16 and will be available in multiple formats at the Galesburg Public Library. The library owns the whole series in multiple formats. If you want to read the first four books, start with The Word is Murder.