The Word Is Murder is a 2018 novel by Anthony Horowitz.
It is the first in Horowitz's series of novels about private detective Daniel Hawthorne. The actual protagonist is...Anthony Horowitz, veteran mystery writer and creator of television series Foyle's War. Horowitz, or rather his Author Avatar, 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 True Crime 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, one that centers around a tragic accident ten years ago, when Diana Cowper hit two young boys with her car in the village of Deal, killing one.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim:
- 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 It's All About Me 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.
- Auto-Incorrect: 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 Hamlet in which Damien's friend Dan played Laertes, but her phone auto-corrected.
- Call-Back: 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.
- Convenient Photograph: 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 Hamlet (where both were in attendance). He's surprised to identify the funeral director as Dan, one of the other students, which is how he figures out the murderer.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The killer is Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director who arranged Diana Cowper's funeral and had only appeared in around two chapters prior to being exposed.
- Driven to Suicide: Robert Cornwallis slits his own throat, rather than be taken alive after Hawthorne bursts in.
- Fainting: Anthony faints after he and Hawthorne discover Damien Cowper's mangled corpse. When he wakes up, Anthony is embarrassed.
- Giggling Villain: Robert Cornwallis does this during his Motive Rant 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.
- Hard-to-Adapt Work: In-Universe, Discussed Trope. 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.
- I Have a Family: 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.
- It's All About Me: 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 Homeland for Showtime and how he, Damien, has been in a lot of plays.
- Literary Allusion Title: Discussed Trope. Horowitz, casting about for a title for his book, thinks about how many classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Brave New World used the Literary Allusion Title, and Anthony's hero Agatha Christie 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 Real Life Anthony Horowitz did invent fictional character Daniel Hawthorne.
- Never One Murder: 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.
- No Dead Body Poops: 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.
- Not the First Victim: While Robert Cornwallis (aka Dan Roberts) killed both Diana and Damian Cowper, he reveals in his Evil Gloating to Horowitz that he also killed Amanda Leigh, who disappeared years previously, torturing her to death and then dismembering her body across seven graves.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: 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.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When Daniel Hawthorne interrupts Anthony's business meeting and sees the person Anthony is meeting with: Steven Spielberg."Do I know you?," he asked.
"I'm Steven Spielberg."
"Are you in films?"
I wanted to weep. - Power Hair: On the first page the narration describes Diana Cowper and the "sense of determination" imparted by her eyes and "her sharply cut hair."
- Real-Person Cameo: Anthony's wife Jill and his agent Hilda Starke both appear. There is also a funny scene where Anthony is meeting Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson 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.)
- Red Herring: 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.
- Separated by a Common Language: 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.
- Share the Sickness: This turns out to be a major aspect of the killer's motivation. 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.
- Sherlock Scan: 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.
- Suicide, Not Murder: 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.
- Take That!: After being told that Charles Hawtrey used to hang out at the beach in Deal where the accident happens, Anthony reflects on how the Carry On movies were "British humor at its most dysfunctional" and how Hawtrey specifically was never funny.
- There Are No Coincidences: 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.)
- Title Drop: 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.
- A True Story in My Universe: 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 instalment "Anthony Horowitz" is reluctant to do the project as he has never written true crime before.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Robert Cornwallis, the funeral director and Dan Roberts, Damian Cowper's thwarted RADA classmate, are the same person.
- The Watson: 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.
