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A review by emyers613
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
4.0
I'd like to start by saying I enjoyed this book. Mystery novels are my absolute favorites, so my reviews may be a bit biased, but hey, we like what we like.
This is the third outing with author Anthony Horowitz and detective Daniel Hawthorne. The style of the book is engaging - Horowitz is writing the book you're reading. Such an interesting perspective. In this novel, he is currently on a book tour for the first book in the series that we were reading as he was writing in Book #1: The Word is Murder. The formula still works here. Without giving too much away, Horowitz even comments that circumstances of the murder we're reading about don't lend will to audience enjoyment. "How can the audience be satisfied if the murderer is a thoroughly unlikeable person!" (Or something to that effect, I'm paraphrasing).
I gave this book only 4/5 stars, because by the time we were halfway through I already had an idea of who the murderer was. Also, I was getting annoyed with both Horowitz and Hawthorne. The latter was as crotchety and secretive as ever, and the former was being very whiney about the situation. I was getting tired of him complaining about Hawthorne just being who he is - especially since he was making an effort to open up a little bit. The second half of the book picked up once the clues started to resolve into answers, and we realized what all the characters were up to. Horowitz (the character) stopped whining and feeling sorry for himself so much.
The ending tied up neatly in a bow, even if I saw it coming. Not exactly how the murderer did it, but I figured out that they would be the culprit based on how....neatly....another suspect was set up to take the fall.
All in all, I enjoyed it and will be reading the next book in the series - if only to find out more about Hawthornes backstory.
This is the third outing with author Anthony Horowitz and detective Daniel Hawthorne. The style of the book is engaging - Horowitz is writing the book you're reading. Such an interesting perspective. In this novel, he is currently on a book tour for the first book in the series that we were reading as he was writing in Book #1: The Word is Murder. The formula still works here. Without giving too much away, Horowitz even comments that circumstances of the murder we're reading about don't lend will to audience enjoyment. "How can the audience be satisfied if the murderer is a thoroughly unlikeable person!" (Or something to that effect, I'm paraphrasing).
I gave this book only 4/5 stars, because by the time we were halfway through I already had an idea of who the murderer was. Also, I was getting annoyed with both Horowitz and Hawthorne. The latter was as crotchety and secretive as ever, and the former was being very whiney about the situation. I was getting tired of him complaining about Hawthorne just being who he is - especially since he was making an effort to open up a little bit. The second half of the book picked up once the clues started to resolve into answers, and we realized what all the characters were up to. Horowitz (the character) stopped whining and feeling sorry for himself so much.
The ending tied up neatly in a bow, even if I saw it coming. Not exactly how the murderer did it, but I figured out that they would be the culprit based on how....neatly....another suspect was set up to take the fall.
All in all, I enjoyed it and will be reading the next book in the series - if only to find out more about Hawthornes backstory.