Reviewed by Harriet
I’m a great admirer of Anthony Horowitz’s crime novels, especially the two series which are so brilliantly metafictonal. One is the Sue Ryland series, starting with Magpie Murders, which has been adapted for television. The other, to which this latest one belongs, is the Hawthorne series, which I suspect might be harder to televise as one of the two main characters is the novelist himself. Or is he? There is certainly a character called Anthony Horowitz, who has the same wife, the same agent, and the same house. But the role he plays in the novels, and the relationship he has with the other protagonist, ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne, bear a strong resemblance to Watson and his relationship with Sherlock Holmes – or perhaps more accurately Watson as he is portrayed in films and TV series – a slightly comic buffoon who wants to help the detective but invariably gets everything wrong. His relationship with Hawthorne began because the detective wanted someone to record his pursuit of and success with a case, and has continued to call Horowitz in every time in the future.
So A Deadly Episode resembles the other novels in the series in that way, but the twist here is that the crime takes place on a film set, and the film is an adaptation of Anthony’s first book, The Word is Murder (which of course is Horowitz’s real first book in the series). So there are actors playing the part of Hawthorne and that of Anthony. And, deeply humiliating for Anthony, Hawthorne has been hired as an adviser on the film, and gets preferential treatment – luxurious hotel rooms, expensive meals, rides in limousines – while Anthony has to tag along and always take second best. He’s excluded from meetings, patronised by the film crew, and, as always, by Hawthorne himself. Here the actor playing Hawthorne has been murdered, and needless to say there are a large number of suspects, six in all, each of whom has quite a valid reason for wanting him dead.
This all takes place in the first half of the novel, but in the second half the investigation takes a different turn when Hawthorne suspects that he himself was almost certainly the target. So off the two of them go to the village of Reeth in the Yorkshire Dales, with which Anthony knows Hawthorne has a childhood connection. He’s always been curious about Hawthorne’s past and upbringing, but the detective is so cagey that only a few tiny facts have emerged over the years. So visiting the large house with which he clearly had some association leads Anthony to hope he’ll discover some more facts. However, though some intriguing information does emerge, another mystery probably connected with Hawthorne’s childhood surfaces in the area for which Anthony can’t find any answers. More to discover in the next novel, no doubt.
After all this it’s back to the film – which is being shot in Hastings, by the way, the location of Horowitz’s long running TV series, Foyle’s War – and after all this the uncovering of the perpetrator is almost a let-down. But that doesn’t spoil the fun.
At one point in the novel, someone accuses Anthony of having an over-active imagination, and he remarks that this is what keeps him writing. Something for which his readers, including me, should be very grateful for.
Harriet is one of the founders and a co-editor of Shiny.
Anthony Horowitz, A Deadly Episode (Century, 2026). 978-1529904321, 384pp., hardback.
BUY at Waterstones, via our affiliate link.
