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My "Desert Island" Novels

 One "rule" of detective fiction is that the star should be mostly admirable; PD James, Ruth Rendell, and Donna Leon have all invented sleuths who would also make fine spouses.


(I think Rendell explicitly said, "I knew I'd spend many years with Wexford, so I decided I'd invent a guy I liked.")

Anthony Horowitz breaks the rule. In his celebrated Horowitz/Hawthorne series, he makes the detective (Hawthorne) obnoxious. Hawthorne is openly homophobic, snide, and maybe incapable of feeling emotions. He says, "I don't really care about the greater good. Most of the murderers I catch have no intention of committing subsequent murders. The harm has already occurred. My work is all a game to me."

This is just one startling invention in the world of Horowitz. Also, Horowitz inserts himself into the action; he is a writer, a colleague of Hawthorne, and so he observes each case as it unfolds. This allows him to poke fun at the detective genre. In one novel, he believes that the killer may turn out to be an evil pedophile. ("That's bad news for my book," he says. "It's best when the killer is human, and relatable, and tragic. Who cares if the killer is some crazed Satanic monster?") Horowitz also notices when he is spending all of his narrative energy on ten or twelve suspects. "But there are hundreds and hundreds of people on this island. They are people I haven't met. Why can't the killer be foreign to me?"

A third gift: Horowitz imagines secondary characters who simply don't behave in predictable ways. A suspect is accosted on the sidewalk, and she says, "I don't want to talk about this case." She walks away. How often does this happen in a murder mystery? ....A minor player has fun with the polite question: "Am I being disruptive?" (Kindly, she says, "Yes. You're being disruptive. I'll answer, since you asked. Please leave.") Everyday rudeness gets a spotlight, and you have to giggle: "Hello, how are you? said my publicist. And before I could respond, she said, This is Trish, my new assistant....")

People look for clarity, nuance, and humor in good writing. It's humor that is so often missing from detective fiction. Horowitz has tremendous and unusual gifts. Even his titles make me laugh (because each combines a grammatical/stylistic term with a casual reference to dripping blood): "The Word Is Murder." "The Twist of a Knife." "Close to Death...."

I love this writer's brain. I can reread these genre books without getting bored, because so much is happening on any given page.
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