The Word is Murder

This ranks up there as one of the most fascinating, artfully crafted mysteries ever!  Anthony Horowitz authored the Alex Rider series for young adults, and served as screenwriter for several PBS Masterpiece Mystery! shows including  Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War.

The first chapters confused me.  Was the author going to spend the entire novel talking about his personal writing history?  Was the personal information ever going to connect with the story arc or had some editor somewhere simply mislabeled the introduction with the early chapter titles?  

Before long, though, I realized that Horowitz has more than intimated himself into the novel, he places himself at the center of the action as a novelist working with a detective to solve a crime.  It's all very meta.

Mrs, Cowper walks into a funeral home to arrange future services for herself.  Six hours later she is dead.  Murdered.  Several murders follow, all tied to a ten year old accident that killed on young boy and resulted in life long injuries for his brother.

Disgraced ex-detective, Daniel Hawthorne enters the picture, as he frequently does when the London police are stumped.  Hawthorne, arrogant, surly and secretive, enlists the help of Horowitz, thinking that the author will follow him as he solves this complex case, and ultimately write a best selling novel about the investigation. The push and pull that erupts between these two often slows the movement of the investigation (but not in a bad way), with both parties questioning the efficacy of the relationship.  Told in first person, Horowitz lets us in on all sorts of writing and publishing secrets while being critiqued at every turn by Hawthorne.  It is this very difference in styles that eventually brings together a obtuse mixture of parts leading to a solution. 

The narrative unraveling of the case is a fine homage to Agatha Christie and  all traditional gumshoe detectives who rely on cunning, intuition, and sometime law-breaking to solve crimes.

Next up -  Killers of the Flower Moon

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