Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate · #3
A Line To Kill
When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation—or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past.
Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line.
When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?
Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.
The series
In a genre obsessed with control, here’s a mystery series that thrives on unpredictability—even for its narrator.
Read full series description
The Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate novels crack open the traditional detective story and rearrange the pieces with sly wit and unnerving precision. At the center is Daniel Hawthorne, a former detective with a genius for deduction and a habit of keeping everyone—especially his biographer—in the dark. That biographer? A fictionalized version of the author himself, reluctantly dragged into real-life murder cases and quickly realizing that writing the story is nothing compared to living inside it.
What unfolds is more than just a whodunit. These are layered, metafictional mysteries that explore not only the crimes at hand but also the act of storytelling itself. The investigations lead readers through elegant country homes, shadowy corridors, and grimy back alleys, but it’s the strange dance between Hawthorne and his chronicler that gives the series its unsettling charm. Their dynamic is sharp-edged, often funny, and filled with questions—many of which the author may never get answers to.
Told with the kind of confidence that only comes from deconstructing the genre from the inside out, this series invites readers to solve the puzzle even as it rewrites the rules. Clues are laid with care, red herrings are brilliantly placed, and beneath it all, there's an ever-present question: who’s really in control of the story?
Blending classic British mystery with a postmodern twist, this is crime fiction that plays fair—until it doesn’t. And that’s exactly what makes it so irresistible.
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