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* ShareTheSickness: This turns out to be a major aspect of the killer's motivation. [[spoiler:When Damian was at RADA, his classmate, Dan Roberts, got the role of Hamlet in the final-year play. Damian was angry, as he felt he deserved the part. Damian got his girlfriend, Amanda Leigh, to seduce Dan, as she had glandular fever. He contracted glandular fever and lost the role of Hamlet, having to play Laertes, while Damian took over Hamlet. Damian became extremely successful, while Dan's career stalled, and he blamed it on Damian and Amanda. He killed Amanda, but wasn't able to get at Damian due to his extraordinary Hollywood success. He killed Damian's mother, Diana, instead, to lure Damian back home and kill him]].
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* AutoIncorrect: Part of the solution. The last text Diana Cowper sent, just before she was killed, said she had just seen "THE BOY WHO WAS LACERATED." Anthony thinks this is a reference to Jeremy Godwin, the boy who lived after Diana hit him with her car, who suffered from lacerations of the brain. Hawthorne figures out that Diana was actually trying to type "THE BOY WHO WAS LAERTES," referring to the RADA production of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' in which Damien's friend Dan played Laertes, but her phone auto-corrected.
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* AutoIncorrect: Part of the solution. The last text Diana Cowper sent, just before she was killed, said she had just seen "THE BOY WHO WAS LACERATED." Anthony thinks this is a reference to Jeremy Godwin, the boy who lived after Diana hit him with her car, who suffered from lacerations of the brain. Hawthorne [[spoiler:Hawthorne figures out that Diana was actually trying to type "THE BOY WHO WAS LAERTES," referring to the RADA production of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' in which Damien's friend Dan played Laertes, but her phone auto-corrected.]]
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* DrivenToSuicide: Robert Cornwallis slits his own throat, rather than be taken alive after Hawthorne bursts in.
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* TheDogWasTheMastermind: The killer is [[spoiler:Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director who arranged Diana Cowper's funeral and had only appeared in around two chapters prior to being exposed]].
* DrivenToSuicide:Robert Cornwallis [[spoiler:Robert Cornwallis]] slits his own throat, rather than be taken alive after Hawthorne bursts in.
* DrivenToSuicide:
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* GigglingVillain: Robert Cornwallis does this during his MotiveRant when telling Anthony why and how he committed the murders.
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* GigglingVillain: Robert Cornwallis [[spoiler:Robert Cornwallis]] does this during his MotiveRant when telling Anthony why and how he committed the murders.
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* IHaveAFamily: A desperate Anthony tries this when he's in the clutches of the killer, saying that he has a wife and two children. Robert doesn't care.
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* IHaveAFamily: A desperate Anthony tries this when he's in the clutches of the killer, saying that he has a wife and two children. Robert [[spoiler:Robert]] doesn't care.
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* NotTheFirstVictim: While Robert Cornwallis (aka Dan Roberts) killed both Diana and Damian Cowper, he reveals in his EvilGloating to Horowitz that he also killed Amanda Leigh, who disappeared years previously, torturing her to death and then dismembering her body across seven graves.
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* NotTheFirstVictim: While Robert [[spoiler:Robert Cornwallis (aka Dan Roberts) Roberts)]] killed both Diana and Damian Cowper, he reveals in his EvilGloating to Horowitz that he [[spoiler:he also killed Amanda Leigh, who disappeared years previously, torturing her to death and then dismembering her body across seven graves.]]
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* RedHerring: In the end, the entire story about Diana Cowper hitting two children with her car, killing one and maiming the other, has nothing to do with the murder. Robert Cornwallis had a completely different motive and manipulated events in an attempt to draw Hawthorne's attention to that accident.
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* RedHerring: In the end, the entire story about Diana [[spoiler:Diana Cowper hitting two children with her car, killing one and maiming the other, has nothing to do with the murder. Robert Cornwallis had a completely different motive and manipulated events in an attempt to draw Hawthorne's attention to that accident.]]
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* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director and Dan Roberts, Damian Cowper's thwarted RADA classmate, are the same person.
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* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: Robert [[spoiler:Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director director]] and Dan Roberts, Damian Cowper's thwarted RADA classmate, are the same person.
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* SuicideNotMurder: [[spoiler:This is the answer to how Diana was able to write her will before she was murdered. She was planning to commit suicide. However, funeral director Cornwallis didn't know that, and he got there first.]]
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* ATrueStoryInMyUniverse: The conceit of this book and all the novels in the Daniel Hawthorne series is that they are true crime books written by Horowitz about Hawthorne. Indeed, in this first installment "Anthony Horowitz" is reluctant to do the project as he has never written true crime before.
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* ATrueStoryInMyUniverse: The conceit of this book and all the novels in the Daniel Hawthorne series is that they are true crime books written by Horowitz about Hawthorne. Indeed, in this first installment instalment "Anthony Horowitz" is reluctant to do the project as he has never written true crime before.
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* SeparatedByACommonLanguage: Grace mentions changing her daughter Ashleigh's "nappies" and then corrects herself and says she should say "diapers". Ashleigh and her mother had been living for several years in Los Angeles.
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0936.jpeg]]
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* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director and Dan Roberts, Damian Cowper's thwarted RADA classmate, are the same person.
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* NotTheFirstVictim: While Robert Cornwallis (aka Dan Roberts) killed both Diana and Damian Cowper, he reveals in his EvilGloating to Horowitz that he also killed Amanda Leigh, who disappeared years previously, torturing her to death and then dismembering her body across seven graves.
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* ConvenientPhotograph: Apparently subverted before being played straight. Horowitz is suspicious of Amanda Leigh from RADA and Grace Lovell's father and goes there to track down the photographs of the final performance of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' (where both were in attendance). He's surprised to identify [[spoiler:the funeral director]] as Dan, one of the other students, which is how he figures out the murderer.
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Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows, one that centers around a tragic accident ten years ago, when Diana Cowper hit two young boys with her car, killing one.
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Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows, one that centers around a tragic accident ten years ago, when Diana Cowper hit two young boys with her car, car in the village of Deal, killing one.
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* AssholeVictim:
** Diana Cowper is a borderline case, being a cold and friendless woman who cared about nothing other than her son and grandson.
** Damien Cowper is a more pure example, being an ItsAllAboutMe {{Jerkass}}, a selfish egomaniac, a drug addict and serial adulterer, the kind of guy who talks about his upcoming TV project while giving the eulogy at his mom's funeral. When he flew his pregnant girlfriend to America to join him, he got her a coach ticket.
* AutoIncorrect: Part of the solution. The last text Diana Cowper sent, just before she was killed, said she had just seen "THE BOY WHO WAS LACERATED." Anthony thinks this is a reference to Jeremy Godwin, the boy who lived after Diana hit him with her car, who suffered from lacerations of the brain. Hawthorne figures out that Diana was actually trying to type "THE BOY WHO WAS LAERTES," referring to the RADA production of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' in which Damien's friend Dan played Laertes, but her phone auto-corrected.
** Diana Cowper is a borderline case, being a cold and friendless woman who cared about nothing other than her son and grandson.
** Damien Cowper is a more pure example, being an ItsAllAboutMe {{Jerkass}}, a selfish egomaniac, a drug addict and serial adulterer, the kind of guy who talks about his upcoming TV project while giving the eulogy at his mom's funeral. When he flew his pregnant girlfriend to America to join him, he got her a coach ticket.
* AutoIncorrect: Part of the solution. The last text Diana Cowper sent, just before she was killed, said she had just seen "THE BOY WHO WAS LACERATED." Anthony thinks this is a reference to Jeremy Godwin, the boy who lived after Diana hit him with her car, who suffered from lacerations of the brain. Hawthorne figures out that Diana was actually trying to type "THE BOY WHO WAS LAERTES," referring to the RADA production of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' in which Damien's friend Dan played Laertes, but her phone auto-corrected.
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* DrivenToSuicide: Robert Cornwallis slits his own throat, rather than be taken alive after Hawthorne bursts in.
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* GigglingVillain: Robert Cornwallis does this during his MotiveRant when telling Anthony why and how he committed the murders.
-->He giggled to himself. It was the most convincing portrayal of a lunatic I'd ever seen.
-->He giggled to himself. It was the most convincing portrayal of a lunatic I'd ever seen.
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* IHaveAFamily: A desperate Anthony tries this when he's in the clutches of the killer, saying that he has a wife and two children. Robert doesn't care.
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* RedHerring: In the end, the entire story about Diana Cowper hitting two children with her car, killing one and maiming the other, has nothing to do with the murder. Robert Cornwallis had a completely different motive and manipulated events in an attempt to draw Hawthorne's attention to that accident.
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* {{Fainting}}: Anthony faints after he and Hawthorne discover Damien Cowper's mangled corpse. When he wakes up, Anthony is embarrassed.
* HardToAdaptWork: InUniverse, DiscussedTrope. In one of his digressions from the story, Anthony writes about how he has been tasked with writing the screenplay to a ''Tintin'' sequel, but how ''Tintin'' is hard to adapt for various reasons, like how Tintin the character is of indeterminate age, or how the source books don't really have coherent stories, or how there is a strong anti-American bias in the books.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Damien Cowper, a horribly selfish egomaniac. Anthony watches in astonishment as Damien, while giving his mother's eulogy at the funeral, talks about how he's about to be in ''Series/{{Homeland}}'' for Showtime and how he, Damien, has been in a lot of plays.
* HardToAdaptWork: InUniverse, DiscussedTrope. In one of his digressions from the story, Anthony writes about how he has been tasked with writing the screenplay to a ''Tintin'' sequel, but how ''Tintin'' is hard to adapt for various reasons, like how Tintin the character is of indeterminate age, or how the source books don't really have coherent stories, or how there is a strong anti-American bias in the books.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Damien Cowper, a horribly selfish egomaniac. Anthony watches in astonishment as Damien, while giving his mother's eulogy at the funeral, talks about how he's about to be in ''Series/{{Homeland}}'' for Showtime and how he, Damien, has been in a lot of plays.
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* NeverOneMurder: About halfway through the book Damien Cowper is brutally murdered in his home. Hawthorne eventually figures out that Damien was the real target all along.
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* PopCulturalOsmosisFailure: When Daniel Hawthorne interrupts Anthony's business meeting and sees the person Anthony is meeting with: Creator/StevenSpielberg.
-->"Do I know you?," he asked.\\
"I'm Steven Spielberg."\\
"Are you in films?"\\
I wanted to weep.
-->"Do I know you?," he asked.\\
"I'm Steven Spielberg."\\
"Are you in films?"\\
I wanted to weep.
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* RealPersonCameo: Anthony's wife Jill and his agent Hilda Starke both appear. There is also a funny scene where Anthony is meeting Creator/StevenSpielberg and Creator/PeterJackson about the ''Tintin'' script, only for Hawthorne to barge in and ruin the meeting. (Spielberg is irritated to be interrupted, and Jackson is irritated when a tactless Hawthorne criticizes the ''Lord of the Rings'' movies.)
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* TakeThat: After being told that Creator/CharlesHawtrey used to hang out at the beach in Deal where the accident happens, Anthony reflects on how the ''Film/CarryOn'' movies were "British humor at its most dysfunctional" and how Hawtrey specifically was never funny.
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* LiteraryAllusionTitle: DiscussedTrope. Horowitz, casting about for a title for his book, thinks about how many classics like ''Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath'' and ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'' used the Literary Allusion Title, and Anthony's hero Creator/AgathaChristie did it all the time.
* {{Metafiction}}: The concept for the whole Daniel Hawthorne series. Anthony talks in his narration of how he finds Hawthorne the taciturn loner male detective a cliche, and how if he'd been inventing a fictional character, he probably would have written a woman--when of course in RealLife Anthony Horowitz did invent fictional character Daniel Hawthorne.
* NoDeadBodyPoops: Anthony sees a stain on the carpet from when Diana Cowper emptied her bowels as she was being strangled to death. He says that it's a gory detail that he would not have included when writing for a TV show.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Anthony is startled when Hawthorne goes on a homophobic rant after they visit a gay man's home. Anthony is so disturbed that he nearly quits the book project right there.
* {{Metafiction}}: The concept for the whole Daniel Hawthorne series. Anthony talks in his narration of how he finds Hawthorne the taciturn loner male detective a cliche, and how if he'd been inventing a fictional character, he probably would have written a woman--when of course in RealLife Anthony Horowitz did invent fictional character Daniel Hawthorne.
* NoDeadBodyPoops: Anthony sees a stain on the carpet from when Diana Cowper emptied her bowels as she was being strangled to death. He says that it's a gory detail that he would not have included when writing for a TV show.
* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Anthony is startled when Hawthorne goes on a homophobic rant after they visit a gay man's home. Anthony is so disturbed that he nearly quits the book project right there.
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* SherlockScan: Part of Hawthorne's skill set. He impresses Anthony by figuring out that Anthony has been to the beach from sand in his shoes, and that Anthony has gotten a puppy by observing a paw print on his knee.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: Hawthorne says that it ''could'' be a coincidence that Diana Cowper was murdered just hours after she arranged her own funeral, but he doesn't think so. (He's right, although the connection is a surprise.)
* TitleDrop: Early in the book Hawthorne says the title phrase when arguing that Horowitz doesn't need to write about him as a person, because the murder story is what is important. At the end when Hawthorne is lobbying for the title ''Hawthorne Investigates'' for their book, Horowitz reminds him of that quote and says it will make a good title.
* ThereAreNoCoincidences: Hawthorne says that it ''could'' be a coincidence that Diana Cowper was murdered just hours after she arranged her own funeral, but he doesn't think so. (He's right, although the connection is a surprise.)
* TitleDrop: Early in the book Hawthorne says the title phrase when arguing that Horowitz doesn't need to write about him as a person, because the murder story is what is important. At the end when Hawthorne is lobbying for the title ''Hawthorne Investigates'' for their book, Horowitz reminds him of that quote and says it will make a good title.
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Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows.
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Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows.
follows, one that centers around a tragic accident ten years ago, when Diana Cowper hit two young boys with her car, killing one.
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''The Word Is Murder'' is a 2018 novel by Creator/AnthonyHorowitz.
It is the first in Horowitz's series of novels about private detective [[Literature/DanielHawthorneNovels Daniel Hawthorne]]. The actual protagonist is...Anthony Horowitz, veteran mystery writer and creator of television series ''Series/FoylesWar''. Horowitz, or rather his AuthorAvatar, is approached by the entirely fictional Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-police detective who has acted as a technical advisor on some of Horowitz's television projects. Hawthorne wants Horowitz to write a TrueCrime book about him, and he has an idea.
Namely, Hawthorne has been asked to consult with the police on the murder of Diana Cowper. Cowper, a well-to-do widow and mother to TV and movie star Damian Cowper, walked into a funeral parlor one day and made arrangements for her own funeral. Some six hours later, after she had returned back home, she was murdered. Hawthorne thinks it would make for a good book and wants Horowitz to write about him.
Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows.
----
!!Tropes:
* CallBack: Near the beginning of the novel Horowitz, giving a talk at a literary festival, is challenged by a woman who says that he should write real stories and not fiction. This is part of why he agrees to the book deal with Hawthorne. At the very end Horowitz finds out that the woman at the festival was Hawthorne's ex-wife and it was a set-up.
* PowerHair: On the first page the narration describes Diana Cowper and the "sense of determination" imparted by her eyes and "her sharply cut hair."
* ATrueStoryInMyUniverse: The conceit of this book and all the novels in the Daniel Hawthorne series is that they are true crime books written by Horowitz about Hawthorne. Indeed, in this first installment "Anthony Horowitz" is reluctant to do the project as he has never written true crime before.
* TheWatson: Anthony Horowitz's role in this book and the series, being the faithful scribe who describes what the detective is doing, but never figures things out himself. Towards the end, he uncovers a crucial bit of evidence but draws a completely wrong conclusion about what it means.
It is the first in Horowitz's series of novels about private detective [[Literature/DanielHawthorneNovels Daniel Hawthorne]]. The actual protagonist is...Anthony Horowitz, veteran mystery writer and creator of television series ''Series/FoylesWar''. Horowitz, or rather his AuthorAvatar, is approached by the entirely fictional Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-police detective who has acted as a technical advisor on some of Horowitz's television projects. Hawthorne wants Horowitz to write a TrueCrime book about him, and he has an idea.
Namely, Hawthorne has been asked to consult with the police on the murder of Diana Cowper. Cowper, a well-to-do widow and mother to TV and movie star Damian Cowper, walked into a funeral parlor one day and made arrangements for her own funeral. Some six hours later, after she had returned back home, she was murdered. Hawthorne thinks it would make for a good book and wants Horowitz to write about him.
Horowitz is reluctant, as he has only written fiction. But he is intrigued by the mystery, and agrees to follow Hawthorne around for the book. A particularly twisty murder story follows.
----
!!Tropes:
* CallBack: Near the beginning of the novel Horowitz, giving a talk at a literary festival, is challenged by a woman who says that he should write real stories and not fiction. This is part of why he agrees to the book deal with Hawthorne. At the very end Horowitz finds out that the woman at the festival was Hawthorne's ex-wife and it was a set-up.
* PowerHair: On the first page the narration describes Diana Cowper and the "sense of determination" imparted by her eyes and "her sharply cut hair."
* ATrueStoryInMyUniverse: The conceit of this book and all the novels in the Daniel Hawthorne series is that they are true crime books written by Horowitz about Hawthorne. Indeed, in this first installment "Anthony Horowitz" is reluctant to do the project as he has never written true crime before.
* TheWatson: Anthony Horowitz's role in this book and the series, being the faithful scribe who describes what the detective is doing, but never figures things out himself. Towards the end, he uncovers a crucial bit of evidence but draws a completely wrong conclusion about what it means.
