TW: child death
Oddly enough, I don’t have much in the way of paranormal fiction in my current library. I’m very disappointed in myself.
I was looking for something in my library worthy of Spooky Season, but I didn’t find much. The best I could do was this murder mystery. I’ll have to remedy that.
That said, I still had a lot of fun reading this. Horowitz does a good job of withholding very important information and providing sufficient red herrings that I had no idea who the killer was before the big reveal.
I did like the idea of Horowitz inserting himself into the narrative. It’s especially funny to watch him create a character who picks apart his own writing (only to be banned from reading it until it’s finished.)
The book opens by telling us an elderly woman went to a funeral parlor to plan her own funeral the same day she was murdered.
The police are on the case, but so is a disgraced detective named Daniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne reaches out to Horowitz to write about his work with the agreement that they’ll split the profits of the book 50/50. Horowitz hesitates, not least because the case hasn’t been solved yet. What if Hawthorne can’t crack it? But he finds himself intrigued by the case and ends up agreeing.
One of my favorite parts of the book was when Horowitz told his editor about this plan and of course she’s horrified at the idea of her author giving up half his earnings on a book he puts all the work into writing.
Meanwhile, Horowitz is following Hawthorne around while he investigates the scene and interviews witnesses and suspects.
We quickly discover that the murder victim had killed a young boy almost exactly 10 years ago. She was driving without her glasses when two young boys ran into the road before their nanny could stop them. One of the boys was killed instantly, while the other suffered brain damage that affected him for the rest of his life.
A significant portion of the book is devoted to investigating the incident to determine the likelihood that someone involved killed Diana Cowper to get revenge. If that’s something you don’t want to read about, skip this book.
Hawthorne and Horowitz are portrayed as a modern Holmes and Watson and Horowitz goes out of his way to show us what an asshole Hawthorne is. He lies to Horowitz and uses other people to manipulate him into agreeing to write the book, but what really stood out was his very strong homophobia. It didn’t have anything to do with the case, so why make such a big deal out of it? Why can’t he be a brilliant detective and a nice guy?
As much as I enjoyed this book, I didn’t love it. Part of that is because I’m not a big fan of murder mysteries to begin with, but it’s also because I’m sick of stories about white men getting a pass for being assholes because they’re smart. The same rules don’t apply to women or people of color and I’m so over it.