Description:
A New York Times Bestseller
"Delightful. . . . All of Horowitz's conceits are present here: a murder mystery within the murder mystery, winking nods at the author's real-life career as a novelist and screenwriter, and playful experimentation with the detective-story form." --Wall Street Journal
In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's sixth literary whodunnit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, a major feature film is in the works. Except--they're behind schedule, they've run out of money and . . . oh! The star has just been murdered.
Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead.
Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive.
Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie.
But what if Caine's murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.
From the film set on the south coast of England, the story moves to Reeth, in Yorkshire, the village where Hawthorne grew up. A burned-down school, a car accident that isn't what it seems, blackmail and murder in an Elizabethan country house . . . somehow they combine to unlock the secret of what has happened in Hastings.
For once, the local police are helpful. DS Sarah Milnes gives Hawthorne carte blanche to investigate and there may even be a hint of romance in the air. Which leaves his hapless sidekick, Horowitz, on his own, stumbling his way to the truth.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, A Deadly Episode is an intriguing page-turner that once again demonstrates why Anthony Horowitz is the reigning king of the modern whodunit.
The other books in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series include (in chronological order):
- The Word is Murder
- The Sentence is Death
- A Line to Kill
- A Twist of the Knife
- Close to Death
Brief description:
Anthony Horowitz is one of the UK's most prolific and successful writers, unique in being active in both adult and YA fiction, TV, theatre, and journalism. Several of his novels have been instant New York Times bestsellers. His Alex Rider spy series for young adults has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide and has become a hugely successful show on Amazon Prime Video. Marble Hall Murders, the third part of his Susan Ryeland series, is airing on PBS. He lives in London and was recently awarded the CBE for services to literature.
Review Quotes:
This book allows Horowitz, or "Horowitz," to go on a mission to learn more about the origins of his elusive partner. As always, most of his surmises turn out to be wrong, but we are treated to a pleasing tale-within-a-tale about an old case of Hawthorne's that reveals him, once more, to have Holmesian levels of brilliance. [And], as always in this sprightly series, the best parts come at the expense of the author. -Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review
Horowitz's ever-inventive Horowitz & Hawthorne series gets extra metafictional in this brilliant sixth installment.... As always, the author combines delicious dry humor with a rigorous fair-play whodunit, but this installment's Scream-like Hollywood satire takes it to another level. This series is in peak form. -Publishers Weekly, starred review
The sixth entry in [this] delightful series...makes [for] a fascinated reader. -Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
Reveals new layers to his characters, deepening the bond between them as well as between readers and this series. -Shelf Awareness