The Word is Murder

A Guardian “Best Thriller of the Year”

Anthony Horowitz has delivered yet another twist on the classic crime novel with this contemporary take on Sherlock Holmes. The Word Is Murder is original and suspenseful and a masterful amalgam of homage and parody.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as Watson to a modern-day Holmes. Both are investigating a case involving buried secrets, murder and a trail of bloody clues.

On a bright spring morning, a woman goes into a funeral parlour to plan her own service. Six hours later she is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne and his partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes he’s at the centre of a story he can’t control . . . and that his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own.