There’s something delightfully audacious about the premise of A Deadly Episode. The latest instalment in Anthony Horowitz’s long-running Hawthorne series begins with a murder that appears, at first glance anyway, to be deeply personal: private detective Daniel Hawthorne is stabbed to death.
Except he isn’t.
It quickly emerges that the victim is really rising movie star David Caine, the actor who has been playing Hawthorne in a film adaptation of Horowitz’s first Hawthorne mystery, The Word Is Murder. It’s the sort of metafictional twist that Horowitz has turned into a trademark of the series.
Ever since The Word Is Murder (actual book, not fictional film), Horowitz has written himself into the books as a slightly bewildered narrator, chronicling the investigations of prickly ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne. In A Deadly Episode, the concept folds in on itself even further as the earlier adventure of Hawthorne and Horowitz is adapted for the screen.
As hooks go, it’s irresistible.
It’s also already the third week of production when Horowitz is invited to visit the set of The Word Is Murder. The filming location is Hastings, and the production appears to be heading rapidly towards disaster. The director is temperamental, the screenwriter is rewriting everything in sight, the budget is collapsing and the actors loathe each other.
At the heart of this combustible mixture is David Caine, cast as Hawthorne despite his misgivings about murder mysteries. Caine is handsome, talented and spectacularly unpleasant. He’s insulted colleagues, demanded a runner be fired, clashed with the director and generally behaved like someone determined to accumulate enemies.
Still, it comes as quite the surprise when Caine is stabbed.
The set transforms from a chaotic film production into an active crime scene. Everyone present has a motive. The disgruntled agent he recently dismissed. The producer struggling to finance the film. Fellow actors nursing wounded egos. Even members of the crew who have been publicly humiliated by Caine’s arrogance.
But the most intriguing question for Horowitz is whether Caine was really the intended victim. After all, he was playing Hawthorne – dressing in his signature getup, adopting his mannerisms, occupying a Winnebago with Hawthorne’s name on the door – and the real detective was nearby during the crime.
Indeed, at the centre of A Deadly Episode, as always, is Daniel Hawthorne, one of the more unusual detectives in contemporary crime fiction. Hawthorne is brilliant, secretive and frequently unpleasant, revealing almost nothing about his personal life while expecting Horowitz to faithfully record his exploits.
A major draw of the series is the uneasy relationship between detective and writer. Horowitz’s on-page persona is perpetually frustrated by Hawthorne’s evasiveness, although he remains irresistibly drawn to the participating in (with debatable effectiveness) and chronicling his cases.
In A Deadly Episode, that dynamic remains intact. Hawthorne approaches the investigation with his usual dry efficiency while Horowitz struggles to keep up – not only with the clues but also with the increasingly surreal situation of investigating the murder of Hawthorne’s fictional counterpart.
This allows Horowitz to continue doing what he does best: blending a traditional puzzle mystery with playful commentary about storytelling. One of the cleverest aspects of A Deadly Episode is the way it explores the relation between fiction and reality. The film set becomes a mirror image of the novels themselves.
As a consequence, characters argue about how really real and fictionally real events should be portrayed on screen, scripts are rewritten to make the story seem more dramatic and Horowitz finds himself watching his own writing transformed into something entirely different, allowing him to question how detective stories are constructed.
Horowitz appears as himself of course, albeit a clearly fictionalised version. Hawthorne may or may not be based on real people. And now, within their fictional world, one of the books is being turned into a film. The result is a hall-of-mirrors narrative that constantly plays with expectations.
Beneath this playful structure, however, lies a traditional mystery. Horowitz has always been influenced by puzzle-driven writers such as Agatha Christie, and A Deadly Episode embraces that classic approach. The suspect list is extensive, the motives are carefully seeded and the investigation unfolds through a series of interviews, revelations and misdirection.
At the same time, Horowitz introduces an additional thread from Hawthorne’s past. As the case develops, it becomes clear that the present-day murder may be linked to one of Hawthorne’s earlier investigations – a possibility that forces the detective to confront the uncomfortable idea that he might once have made a serious mistake.
This strand adds emotional weight to the puzzle. For a character as guarded as Hawthorne, even a glimpse into his history feels significant. And his past is not the only one that needs to be probed. The film industry provides ample opportunity for satire, and Horowitz clearly relishes depicting the inflated egos and petty rivalries of actors, writers and producers.
The director sees himself as a misunderstood genius. The screenwriter wants to reshape the story into something politically fashionable. The actors feud over lines and screen time. Meanwhile, Horowitz – both author and character – looks on with increasing disbelief.
It’s a fertile environment for murder, and Horowitz mines it for both humour and tension.
As the sixth Hawthorne book, A Deadly Episode demonstrates that Anthony Horowitz still has plenty of inventive ideas left for his unusual detective duo. The novel’s central concept – a murder on the set of a film about a detective solving murders – is as playful as it sounds. How many detective stories begin with the murder of the detective and then carry on regardless?
For more crimes plotted by Anthony Horowitz, try The Magpie Murders and Marble Hall Murders.
Century
Print/Kindle/iBook
£11.48
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
