Book Report: The Word Is Murder

6. Anthony Horowitz, The Word Is Murder (2017) (5/14/18)

I've been slogging through a book on the current dysfunction of this country. It's interesting and illuminating, but it's also depressing. Yesterday my friend Kim asked, via a photo on WhatsApp, if I've read Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. I responded with a photo of a different Horowitz book that arrived in my mailbox just the day before. I saw it mentioned in the "What Are You Reading?" column of the Christian Science Monitor, and the fact that we've been binge-watching Foyle's War, a Horowitz creation, caused my ears to perk up. So I ordered it and stuck it on my stack.

But the coincidence caused me to consider: I don't need to slog through just one book. I could pick up another.

Done—and done. This morning I finished The Word Is Murder, a delightful romp through greater London, full of undertakers, actors and producers, lawyers, grieving parents, nannies and house cleaners, a mysterious former police detective named Hawthorne, and Horowitz himself. Even Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson make a brief appearance (Horowitz was involved in the Tintin project). There are also, of course, a couple of murders—the first occurring mere hours after a woman arranges her own funeral. And not a few red herrings.

The best part, though, is the fact that Horowitz himself is the narrator, as he partners with the brilliant yet opaque Hawthorne. They had met several years before when Horowitz was working on a police procedural TV series and Hawthorne was brought in as an expert consultant. Now, Hawthorne approaches Horowitz and proposes a book: a real-life one about an ongoing murder investigation. Horowitz is reluctant. He is a fiction writer, after all; plus, he doesn't much like Hawthorne. But he is between projects, and then a chance question at a book fair—"I don't mean to be rude, but I wonder why you're not more interested in the real world. . . . Aren't you worried that your books might be considered irrelevant?"—convinces him to take it on. The metanarrative device, which is in play right through the acknowledgments, tickles; Horowitz throws in enough real-world detail that we're never entirely sure what's true and what isn't. It also allows us nice insights into Horowitz's own career and working method.

The ultimate solution is satisfying, and one rather hopes that the partnership will endure (which seems to be Horowitz's plan).

Here Horowitz talks about the "scene of the murder," from a writer's perspective:

Normally, when I visit a crime scene, it's one that I have myself manufactured. I don't need to describe it: the director, the locations manager, the designer and the props department will have done most of the work for me, choosing everything from the furniture to the colour of the walls. I always look for the most important details—the cracked mirror, the bloody fingerprint on the windowsill, anything that's important to the story—but they may not be there yet. It depends which way the camera is pointing. I often worry that the room will seem far too big for the victim who supposedly lived there—but then ten or twenty people have to be able to fit inside during filming and the viewers never notice. In fact, the room will be so jammed with actors, technicians, lights, cables, tracks, dollies and all the rest of it that it's quite difficult to work out how it will look on the screen.
 Being the writer on a set is a strange experience. It's hard to describe the sense of excitement, walking into something that owes its existence entirely to what happened inside my head. It's true that I'm completely useless and that no matter where I stand I'm almost certain to be in the way but the crew is unfailingly polite and pleasant to me even if the truth is that we have nothing to say. My work finished weeks ago; theirs is just beginning. So I'll sit down in a folding chair which never has my name on the back. I'll watch form the side. I'll chat to the actors. Maybe a runner will bring me a cup of tea in a styrofoam cup. And as I sit there, I'll take comfort in the knowledge that this is all mine. I am part of it and it is part of me.
 Mrs Cowper's living room couldn't have been more different. As I stepped onto the thick-pile carpet with its floral pattern etched in pink and grey and took in the crystal chandelier, the comfortable, faux-antique furniture, the Country Life and Vanity Fair magazines spread out on the coffee table, the books (modern fiction, hardback, nothing by me) on the built-in shelves, I felt like an intruder. I was on my own, wandering through what might as well have been a museum exhibit as a place where someone had recently lived.

And here you get a taste of Hawthorne, as he interviews the funeral director:

"I have already spoken to the police," Cornwallis began.
 "Yes, sir." It was interesting that Hawthorne called him "sir." I saw at once that he was quite different when he was dealing with witnesses or suspects or anyone who might help him with his investigation. He came across as ordinary, even obsequious. The more I got to know him, the more I saw that he did this quite deliberately. People lowered their guard when they were talking to him. They had no idea what sort of man he was, that he was only waiting for the right moment to dissect them. For him, politeness was a surgical mask, something he slipped on before he took out his scalpel. "Because of the unusual nature of the crime, I've been asked to provide independent support to the investigation. I'm very sorry to take up your time . . ." He gave the funeral director a crocodile smile. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

And now, I guess I'll get back to American dysfunction.