A Twist of the Knife is a 2022 novel by Anthony Horowitz.
It is the fourth in his series of Daniel Hawthorne Novels, detective stories that feature Anthony Horowitz himself as The Watson. As this one starts, Anthony is categorically refusing to write a fourth book about the exploits of (fictional) private detective Daniel Hawthorne, despite Hawthorne pestering him to do so. Anthony has moved on to other things. He is writing a non-Hawthorne book, Moonflower Murders, and he has a play coming out. The play is called Mindgame and is a comedy-thriller about a reporter who goes to an insane asylum and finds that all is not as it seems.
As it turns out, all is not as it seems with Anthony's play. He is nervous when notoriously caustic critic Harriet Throsby turns up on opening night to review the show. Sure enough, Harriet goes home and writes a viciously negative review of the play that is filled with gratuitous insults. The next morning, Harriet Throsby is murdered! That's bad, but what's much worse for Anthony is when he's arrested and charged with Throsby's murder. Anthony knows he didn't do it, but who did? Ahmet Yurdakul, his producer, whose business is riding on the success of Anthony's play? Jordan Williams, the lead actor? Ewan Lloyd, the director, who's trying to make a comeback in London theater? Harriet's husband, Arthur? Or someone else?
To find out, Anthony turns to the one person who can get him out of this mess: Hawthorne.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Harriet Throsby. Not just a mean and nasty critic, but a homophobe and a cruel writer. The ending reveals that it's likely, if not certain, that back in theday she killed drama critic Frank Heywood so she could get his job.
- Author Avatar: Once again, Anthony Horowitz writes himself into the Hawthorne series as the narrator and Hawthorne's Watson. And beyond simply being a character, Horowitz uses details from his real life: Mindgame was a real play, although it ran on the London stage in 1999 rather than 2018 like in this book.
- Bucket Booby-Trap: A deadly serious one, in the backstory. Stephen Longhurst and his friend Wayne Howard, boys of 10 and 11 respectively, rigged up a bust of Cicero atop the door of their school's headmaster, Philip Alden. It fell on his head, cracked his skull, and killed him.
- Caustic Critic: Taken to the extreme with Harriet Throsby, a mean and vicious person who takes pleasure in writing nasty reviews. Her husband Arthur says she liked it better when the plays weren't any good.
- Fake Brit: In-Universe, Jordan Williams. As Anthony notes he was born and raised in the United States (in fact he is a Native American), but he's adopted a British accent and uses British turns of phrase like "done the dirty". Anthony observes that an American accent starts to creep out when Williams is emotional.
- Inspector Lestrade: Cara Grunshaw of the London police, who bears huge grudges against Anthony and Hawthorne for solving previous cases of hers and deceiving her in the process. She takes malicious pleasure in arresting Anthony for murder, but of course, she's wrong again.
- Kensington Gore: Anthony uses this exact phrase to describe the bag of fake blood that Sky Palmer wears under her uniform, which is supposed to burst when she's stabbed at the end of Act I.
- Mustache Vandalism: Keith, the doorman at the Vaudeville Theatre, says he once saw Harriet Throsby's picture up in the laundry room at the Lyric, with a Hitler mustache drawn on it.
- Mysterious Past: Hawthorne is extremely tight-lipped about his past despite Anthony's intense curiosity. In this novel, Anthony finds out that Hawthorne was adopted.
- Naughty Nurse Outfit: What Sky Palmer wears to play Nurse Plimpton, according to Anthony, who says she's a "caricature" wearing a uniform that is "tight-fitting around her breasts and hips."
- One Phone Call: Anthony is told that he gets one phone call. He places his to Hawthorne.
- Playful Hacker: Kevin Chakraborty, the wheelchair-bound teenaged hacker who cheerfully admits to hacking in to Anthony's phone for funsies. He sometimes helps out Hawthorne and does so in this book, launching a DDOS attack on the police that tanks their computers for a while and delays the processing of evidence against Anthony, buying Anthony and Hawthorne a little time.
- Real-Person Cameo: In addition to writing himself as a main character, Horowitz includes in the book his real-life agent Hilda Starke and his wife Jill. (He hesitates to tell Jill about being arrested, and at the end Starke strong-arms him into agreeing to write more Hawthorne books.)
- The Scottish Trope: Discussed. Sky Palmer, who plays Nurse Plimpton, catches Anthony by surprise when she says of Ewan "He did Macbeth last year," instead of saying "the Scottish play." Anthony observes that she really isn't "committed to the acting world." (The finale reveals that she's the daughter of a rich rock star and is only acting to have something to do.)
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: How Maureen Bates met Ahmet and eventually went to work for him: he was doing the booking for Cats and found out that Maureen had seen the show a hundred times.
- Separated by a Common Language: Anthony briefly considers Life Comes to a Full Stop as the title for a fourth Hawthorne novel, but then dismisses it, thinking that it "wouldn't make sense in America, where they have periods."
- Summation Gathering: Hawthorne plays this arrow-straight, gathering all the characters together and then going on a long explanation where he reveals his discoveries and various lies that he's been told, before finally pointing out the killer. At the end Hawthorne gleefully reveals that he did it on purpose, for the sake of Anthony's next book, and name-checks Agatha Christie.
- Title Drop: Adrian Wells, Harriet's old editor, says she enjoyed "the pleasure that comes with the twist of a knife" when writing a bad review.
- The Watson: Anthony Horowitz as usual, following Hawthorne around and narrating his adventures and never guessing what Hawthorne's thinking. He's got more at stake in this book, being the suspect himself.
