From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

The Word is Murder (Hawthorne & Horowitz #1)

Anthony Horowitz,

Rory Kinnear (Narrator)

Start date: April 8, 2020

Finish date: April 28, 2020

Discussion: 2020 Read Harder Challenge

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2020 Read Harder Challenge

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* 2020 Read Harder Challenge
By Book Riot · 1 post · 3933 views

last updated Dec 06, 2019 03:56PM

Task #20: Read a middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK
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last updated Dec 31, 2020 02:39PM

What Members Thought

May 15, 2020 Erin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Hawthorne Investigates - what fun!

During my, so far three months of quarantine (I haven’t left the house since mid-February) I’ve read mostly easy to digest thrillers and murder mysteries with a few notable exceptions). They’re easy to digest, not too taxing and good escapism - Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD is one of my all-time favorite books, but it’s NOT what I’m looking for at the moment.

So, enter the great Kindle Unlimited and a large number of series books and disposable thrillers, most of Hawthorne Investigates - what fun!

During my, so far three months of quarantine (I haven’t left the house since mid-February) I’ve read mostly easy to digest thrillers and murder mysteries with a few notable exceptions). They’re easy to digest, not too taxing and good escapism - Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD is one of my all-time favorite books, but it’s NOT what I’m looking for at the moment.

So, enter the great Kindle Unlimited and a large number of series books and disposable thrillers, most of which I won’t remember a thing about a week after I’ve read them (again, a few notable exceptions). However, I was reading a book where magpies, the birds, kept coming up, and I remembered reading and enjoying a book called THE MAGPIE MURDERS some time ago and I wondered whether the author had written anything else.

He has.

Enter this wonderful book featuring....the writer Anthony Horowitz. Yes, it’s fiction, but he places the his real self with his actual accomplishments (“Midsomer Murder,” “Foyle’s War”” as the narrator and he fills the book with other real life people (he meets with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, for example.). I can’t tell you what fun it is to take a peek into his life.

And, more importantly, after reading so many fairly disposable books recent I realized within the first few pages what a joy it is to read a truly good writer, regardless of the topic. Within the first few pages he describes a day “when the sunshine is almost white and promises a warmth that it doesn’t quite deliver,” and “books that had that peculiar sense of sadness that comes with being unread.”

In this book a woman named Diana Cowphers has been murdered. Her son, Damian is a rising young actor (soon to appear in “Homeland” with Clare Danes and Mandy Patinkin, as did Brit Damien Lewis). Anthony finds himself, reluctantly, trailing former police officer Hawthorne (whom he describes as “as if he’d become a bad photograph of himself”) who is working as a consultant for the police; Anthony has agreed to write a book about Hawthorne’s investigation, though he really doesn’t like the man.
The mystery itself is a good whodunit and the novel is enjoyable cover to cover. I believe there’s a second in the series....hooray for GREAT detective stories. Fans will love this one. ...more

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Jan 06, 2019 Donna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

I may have thought this was a great book three years ago, but I remembered absolutely nothing of it. Since I wanted to read the second in the series (third already published) I had to read it again. It's still great and maybe this time I'll remember it if I read more in the series.

Horowitz is an inventive writer. I enjoyed his two books featuring a Sherlock Holmes connection. Now he's started a new series where "Anthony Horowitz" is cataloging the exploits of an equally eccentric detective. It's ...more

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Mar 16, 2020 Bill Doughty rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, crime, mystery, books-about-books

Probably more like 2.5 or 2.75 stars. I sort of liked it, or at least parts of it, but the author writing himself in as one of main characters never sat well with me, and as a Watson stand-in he mostly makes himself look like a doofus. And his would-be Holmes doesn't have any of the real deal's enjoyable quirks, he's more of just a full-on asshole. The mystery itself is handled well and I'm interested in checking out more of Horowitz's work, I guess, but I'd steer clear of another Hawthorne book ...more

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Mar 09, 2023 Carly Thompson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2023, mystery, library-book-group

I didn't really care for the device of the author as a character. The mystery was knotty and with a fair amount of red herrings. I didn't find the duo of Hawthorne and Horowitz appealing enough to read more in the series. ...more

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