A Deadly Episode (Hawthorne & Horowitz #6) [S0048]

2026 HCDJ in Gift-Worthy condition. 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. DSI 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.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "What keeps me coming back is the voice. Between that dry humor and the dynamic between Hawthorne and Horowitz, which still works for me every time, there are always at least a handful of moments that get an actual laugh out of me.

Once again, what I especially loved this time was that delightful meta layer. The behind-the-scenes look at adapting the first book of this series into a film - the headaches, the egos, the collaboration struggles, the general chaos of it all - added such a fun twist on the usual texture Horowitz brings to the story. That insider angle is something he just does so well, and is definitely one of the things that makes this series stand out for me."

"Anthony Horowitz is once again a character in his own book, using the meta-fictional wit he is so good at writing to make this a strong addition to the series. The first 25% of the book is slow, but it eventually becomes Hawthorne's most personal case yet. It is the closest that Horowitz and the readers come to learning the truth about Hawthorne's past."