April 22, 2024
Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
Anthony receives a call from his agent, asking him to write another mystery about Daniel Hawthorne, to be ready for release in in time for the Christmas sales. The only problem is, Hawthorne doesn't have a current case that he is working on. Anthony's agent suggests to them that Anthony should write a book about one of Hawthorne's old cases that happened five years earlier. Even though Hawthorne agrees and chooses the case, he seem reluctant to have Anthony write the book, doling out his notes a bit at a time.
The fifth book in the Horowitz and Hawthorne series, with the usual complex plot. This was one of the less successful titles in the series. The plot is a locked-room type of mystery, with the victim and the killer both living in the same gated community. However, there are some holes in the methodology. Anthony complains that he is having a hard time writing the book since he doesn't know how it ends, which doesn't make sense since the case took place five years earlier. It was quite sensational and received loads of media coverage, so it seems he could have looked up the details online. He does an online search for and finds things like information about the obscure organization that employs Hawthorne as well as contact information on another of Hawthorne's cases with only the person's last name. I hope the next book is better.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.
Richmond, the setting of this mystery
