The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is about an ass of a detective and an easily manipulated writer with boundary issues. The writer is orchestrated into writing this book, as evident by the book in hand, and it follows an investigation into the death a woman who plans her funeral hours before her murder. We get a first-person account which allows the reader to join in on the adventure and the inner thoughts of the author. I really did enjoy the structure and concept behind the book. A writer writes about himself in a semi-fictional world, in which he creates this intriguing story but interweaves real people, shows, and movies. The name drops are cool and London is a great setting. It did interest me right away and I found it an easy read. It was quick and held my attention throughout. There were phrasings throughout that were teasing and playful which made me smirk. However, there were things that I definitely did not like. As mentioned above, in my opinion, the detective is an ass. He had only 1 redeeming quality and that was his intelligence and shrewdness (is that technically two?). Otherwise, he is a jerk who is manipulative and doesn’t care how he interjects himself into other people’s lives or how he affects others. He doesn’t even have the courtesy to pay for him own stuff. There are plenty of manipulative (on his account) behaviors and boundary issues (on both the main character’s part) in this book. The writer just can’t say no. As the reader, I can see it plain as day and I did not like it. There were also a couple discrepancies that bothered me and the common phrase in these novels that popped up, “I should have stopped.” There was one other characteristic that made me despise the detective, which I won’t mention so you can find out for yourself. Overall, it had some really good aspects and some aspects that really got under my skin. I will see what the next book in the series brings though.
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