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A review by charelia
The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I've been a fan of Anthony Horowitz since the age of seven, when I started reading his Diamond Brothers series of children's books, which incidentally is also a series of detective stories told from the point of view of said detective's sidekick, so I was excited to finally dive into the author's adult works.
Horowitz brings a new spin to the done-to-death trope of the thoroughly loathsome detective and his everyman foil who serves as narrator, by inserting himself — as in, critically acclaimed author Anthony Horowitz, best known for his Alex Rider series of children’s books — in place of the latter. We get the unique point of view of a fiction novelist trying to craft a story from the narrative in which he's been swept up and, for the first time in his career, he is unable to control. With the exception of a couple of immersion-breaking monologues the format works surprisingly well. It's delightfully meta, although his page-long lament about the backlash he would face should his inclusion of a problematic protagonist be interpreted as an endorsement of the character's views, came across as a little tone-deaf and melodramatic, especially since the offensive content is promptly swept under the rug, lampshade and all.
A good mystery novel must walk the fine line between handing the reader all the necessary clues and allowing them to piece together enough parts of the puzzle to feel a sense of triumphant satisfaction, whilst keeping it subtle enough that the reader will be kicking themselves once the rug is pulled, the final pieces fall into place, and it turns out the big picture was visible all along. Horowitz mastered this balancing act in his children's books, and he masters it here.
There is however one plot element that seriously bothers me, which is the fact thatthe murderer's motivation centres on the fact that they were a contemporary of the second victim at drama school. Yet they are described as being "about forty years old", whilst another former classmate is described as being "in [their] early thirties". Of course the murderer could have simply been older when they enrolled, but this feels like obstructing the reader's deduction with a straight lie rather than the misdirection a mystery novel should employ. It feels especially egregious when the penultimate chapter suddenly revises the murderer's age to "mid-thirties" after the truth has been revealed.
Horowitz brings a new spin to the done-to-death trope of the thoroughly loathsome detective and his everyman foil who serves as narrator, by inserting himself — as in, critically acclaimed author Anthony Horowitz, best known for his Alex Rider series of children’s books — in place of the latter. We get the unique point of view of a fiction novelist trying to craft a story from the narrative in which he's been swept up and, for the first time in his career, he is unable to control. With the exception of a couple of immersion-breaking monologues the format works surprisingly well. It's delightfully meta, although his page-long lament about the backlash he would face should his inclusion of a problematic protagonist be interpreted as an endorsement of the character's views, came across as a little tone-deaf and melodramatic, especially since the offensive content is promptly swept under the rug, lampshade and all.
A good mystery novel must walk the fine line between handing the reader all the necessary clues and allowing them to piece together enough parts of the puzzle to feel a sense of triumphant satisfaction, whilst keeping it subtle enough that the reader will be kicking themselves once the rug is pulled, the final pieces fall into place, and it turns out the big picture was visible all along. Horowitz mastered this balancing act in his children's books, and he masters it here.
There is however one plot element that seriously bothers me, which is the fact that
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia