A Deadly Episode
They’re making a major feature film of the first Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery novel. Except—they’re behind schedule, they’ve run out of money and . . . oh! The star has just been murdered.
Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead.
Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive.
Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie.
But what if Caine’s murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.
From the film set on the south coast of England, the story moves to Reeth, in Yorkshire, the village where Hawthorne grew up. A burned-down school, a car accident that isn’t what it seems, blackmail and murder in an Elizabethan country house . . . somehow they combine to unlock the secret of what has happened in Hastings.
For once, the local police are helpful. DS Sarah Milnes gives Hawthorne carte blanche to investigate and there may even be a hint of romance in the air. Which leaves his hapless sidekick, Horowitz, on his own, stumbling his way to the truth.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, A Deadly Episode is an intriguing page-turner that once again demonstrates why Anthony Horowitz is the reigning king of the modern whodunit.
Readers also enjoyed
Anthony Horowitz
Long before Alex Rider became a teenage icon or Sherlock Holmes returned to the page with fresh intrigue, Anthony Horowitz was crafting mysteries of his own—first in his imagination, then on the page. Born in 1955 in Middlesex, England, Horowitz grew up surrounded by stories, both real and invented. He discovered early that fiction was more than escape; it was a place to find order in chaos, to solve puzzles that real life couldn’t.
What sets Horowitz apart in the world of crime and thriller fiction is not just the breadth of his work, but the way he reinvents the familiar. Whether he’s breathing new life into Conan Doyle’s beloved detective or twisting timelines in Magpie Murders, Horowitz writes with a sleight of hand that keeps readers constantly guessing—and always a step behind. His novels don’t simply offer whodunits; they explore the act of storytelling itself, often blurring the line between author and character, fiction and reality.
Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate
In a genre obsessed with control, here’s a mystery series that thrives on unpredictability—even for its narrator.
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.
Hawthorne and Horowitz Investigate consists of six books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
