Recent Reads - The Sentence is Death

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz - Investigator Daniel Hawthorne is back to investigate another tricky murder case, and he insists that the reluctant author Anthony comes along to record all of it for a second book in the series. Anthony doesn't have time―he's busy working on the set of the TV show he writes―but Hawthorne is hard to dissuade, and soon Anthony is intrigued and involved enough that he is determined to find out the answer to who killed a wealthy divorce lawyer and why. Of course, he'd also like to know more about Hawthorne as a character, but he doesn't give up his own secrets easily.

The murder victim is Richard Pryce, bludgeoned to death with a very expensive wine bottle in his own home. It's clear he knew the killer and wasn't expecting to be attacked, but once Hawthorne and Horowitz start digging into the case, they discover that there are several potential murderers who had motive and opportunity. They will have to follow the threads to Pryce's past and to his most recent divorce case to figure out all the reasons and narrow down the field of suspects.

Once again, Horowitz delivers a clever mystery with some unexpected twists and at least a couple of red herrings. Like Horowitz (the character), I really wanted to test my wit against Hawthorne's and see if I could pick out the murderer on my own. As narrator, Anthony mentions early on that he missed and misconstrued clues that are included in his descriptions, and I guess I missed them too. I picked out my own suspect and was quite convinced I knew who did it, although I wasn't sure exactly how or why. When Anthony pitches his solution and they take it to the unpleasant police detecctive, I figured I was wrong . . . until that solution was shown to be a red herring . . . so maybe I was right after all? I was, and I'm pretty proud of myself for it. 

I chose to use this for the 52 Book Club prompt "an author everyone except me has read" because it seemed I was seeing Horowitz's titles on so many of the book blogs I follow, but prior to reading the first in this series, The Word Is Murder, I actually hadn't read him. Now I'm hooked. Thanks, book bloggers!

From the publisher:

Death, deception, and a detective with quite a lot to hide stalk the pages of Anthony Horowitz's brilliant murder mystery, the second in the bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne.

"You shouldn't be here. It's too late . . . "

These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine―a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn't drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man's many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who's really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realizes that these secrets must be exposed―even at the risk of death . . .

By the same author: The Word Is Murder

This is a book by an author "everyone" besides me has read (#25) for The 52 Book Club's 2024 Reading Challenge.

#the52bookclub #the52bookclub2024

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