Horowitz has mastered the art of crafting detective stories differently, in a meta format. For example, in Magpie Murders, the clues to the mystery reside in another book that’s embedded within the main story. The Word is Murder is structured in the form of a true crime novel where Horowitz himself plays a role as the biographer of fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne during the process of solving a murder. Diana Cowper is found strangled a few hours after she visits a funeral parlour to plan her own funeral. Key characters in the mystery include her son and his girlfriend, her maid, a producer friend, and a family who was hurt in a car accident caused by Diana. Daniel Hawthorne, a detective, contacts Horowitz to write a book about himself and offers him a role in investigating Cowper’s death.
True to his style, Horowitz structures his detective story interestingly — he intersperses actual events in his life (such as the publication of his novels and involvement with TV and movies) with the fictional role that he plays in the murder mystery. After a while, it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction and Horowitz uses this style to dwell on the process and challenges of writing novels. You can imagine him having a quiet chuckle when his fictional self writes about how he accepts Hawthorne’s offer as a shortcut to write a new murder mystery, without doing much research. Or when that fictional self talks about his insecurities around missing out on opportunities that could possibly be life-changing or of saying the wrong things in a literary event with journalists present. This does have its jarring moments though. At one point, there is an entire chapter on a tangential narrative of his involvement with Spielberg’s Tintin movies (which is part real and part fiction), which has no bearing on the story. But there are the parts that makes one think too, like the time when he was trying to make television viewers try to understand the turning away of a gay couple from a hotel from the homophobic owner’s point of view but got pilloried — “we need to tolerate intolerance” as he puts it.
The build-up is top-notch and makes this book a page-turner — Horowitz throws lines early in the book, such as one where he indicates that the first chapter includes a clue that quite clearly identifies the killer or the one where he regrets getting involved because of what happens later, that hooks the reader completely and builds anticipation. And like all good novels, there are enough clues strewn about that would make the reader feel that they could have solved the mystery.
But eventually, I will not rate this among the finest murder mysteries that I have read. Unlike Agatha Christie’s Poirot or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes, Hawthorne is an extremely unlikeable person. Even the more recent Strike from Robert Galbraith’s (JK Rowling) books tends to be brusque, but you can still root for him. And you need a protagonist that you can root for! Hawthorne’s homophobia is also quite apparent early in the book and while Horowitz’s character expresses his displeasure at it, he continues working with Hawthorne and this apparent conflict remains unresolved even at the end. Also, while a Dr. Watson or a Dr. Hastings come across as nincompoops occasionally, it’s easy to empathise with them and their relationships with the main detectives are endearing. Horowitz, on the other hand, comes across as a weak person, a poor foil to Hawthorne, has no chemistry with the detective and for a successful writer, some of his actions are inexplicable. So, for me, this book gets full marks for the writing style but is an average detective story otherwise.
Pros: Clever structure, page turner
Cons: Unlikeable protagonists
