Mystery series: Hawthorne and Horowitz

Happy Friday everyone, I said last Friday that I thought that we were about to go on a bit of a run of crime series posts, and here we are with it

I’ve mentioned this series before, but as the fifth book is out now – and I’ve read it – the time seems right to do a bit of a recap. This is Anthony Horowitz’s mystery series where a fictionalised version of himself is working with Nathanial Hawthorne, an ex-policeman turned private investigator, to write what turns into a series of books about murder investigations Hawthorne has worked on. Book-Horowitz fits in these true crime books alongside his other work – writing novels, working on TV series, promoting his work – and often this leads to more crimes to investigate.

Hawthorn is a mysterious character – we are told the circumstances surrounding his departure from the police force, but not by him and any details about his life he does give up to BookHorowitz are done grudgingly or when his hand is forced. BookHorowitz is a Captain Hastings figure – stumbling through cases, drawing all the wrong conclusions but often thinking he is doing better than Hawthorne.

The first four books in the series have been written in the first person – but the new book is a bit of a departure, with BookHorowitz fulfilling a publishing contract by writing about one of Hawthorne’s prior cases, and giving us sections in the third person from the “book” and then first person sections as BookHorowitz goes through the process of finding out the details about the case – and about some new developments in the backstory.

Once I get going with these (and that usually means I need to actually sit down and get at least 50 pages in), they’re incredibly easy to read, and I really appreciate the meta-ness of it all as Horowitz weaves the fiction into his real biography. And I love how bumbling he makes himself – it’s fun and funny to read. As I said last week, I’m still hoping that he’ll write another Magpie Murder, but I’ll happily accept more in this series!

I would definitely start at the beginning if you’re going to read these – you don’t need to have read the others to follow the new one, but you’ll definitely get more out of it if you do. And they should be fairly easy to get hold of – the new one was in the airport bookshop last week and I fairly frequently see them on the tables in Waterstones and Foyles. And obviously they’re on Kindle and Kobo and audiobook too. Just watch out – because we’ve had a couple of different cover designs now, so you might find a few different styles out there if you’re looking at the paperbacks.

Happy Friday everyone.