Cannonball Read 18

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The Word is Murder (Hawthorne and Horowitz #1) by Anthony Horowitz

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Anthony Horowitz is a reasonably well-known writer. He’s written Sherlock Holmes stories (with the express approval of Conan Doyle’s descendants, mind you). He’s written episodes of Midsomer Murders – the early ones, before the thing went haywire and we began to wonder why this quaint English district had such a high homicide rate. He’s doing well for himself. Therefore, when the boorish Daniel Hawthorne approaches him and asks him to collaborate on a novel, he is inclined to turn him down. Yet somehow, Hawthorne – […]

Anthony Horowitz becomes a character in his own mystery novel.

The Word is Murder (Hawthorne, #1) by Anthony Horowitz

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It’s been almost three months since I finished this and I still don’t know what I want to say about this weird little book. This is a very meta murder mystery, in which Anthony Horowitz becomes a character in his own writing. (It is left up to you to decide how much of his “real life” that we see in the book is like his own real life, but I’m just going to presume background and biographical details are all true, though presumably if he […]

Elementary, my dear…self.

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Read as part of CBR10 Bingo: Off a list. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/75892-the-most-anticipated-books-of-spring-2018.html This book should not have worked. A mystery writer inserting their self as a character is bad enough; most detectives are ancillaries for their creators as is. And my personal track record of the-creator-as-character is not good, though it’s limited to Stephen King’s appearance in his Dark Tower series. Yet it does work, at least well enough, because Anthony Horowitz is such a compelling writer. I discovered Horowitz earlier this year with his superb Magpie Murders book. Later, I found […]



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