Liars and Saints

  No writer alive today is more fun for me than Anthony Horowitz. As he has said in interviews, Horowitz writes just for himself. He is not concerned with market trends. He is not looking for Netflix deals. He writes because he has to write. There is a well-populated world inside his head; he knows how to describe that world. His sentences are elegant, and his stories are surprising, well-structured, and weirdly plausible. The Horowitz/Hawthorne series uses a grammatical or writerly term in each title: "The Word Is Murder," "The Sentence Is Death," "A Line to Kill," "The Twist of a Knife," "Close to Death," "A Deadly Episode." In the newest novel, "Episode," Horowitz is filming a series based on his own books. There is an actor to play Horowitz's detective buddy, Daniel Hawthorne. When the actor is murdered, it looks like a case of professional jealousy "run amok." Is the killer a costar? An agent? A sc...

 For a long while, Anthony Horowitz has worked with the actor Lesley Manville. When Manville recently said, "I want another project," the wish caused Horowitz to grab a pen. He realized he had an idea. The character Horowitz has constructed--Susan Ryeland--is unusual in crime fiction. She is past fifty, romantically unattached, only semi-employed. She is in no way "defeated." She has a spirit of optimism and adventure; without becoming cloying, Horowitz shows that Ryeland is an admirable, enterprising person who just happens not to resemble Harry Bosch, John Rebus, Guido Brunetti, Adam Dalgliesh, or Armand Gamache. Ryeland's calling is not to solve murders; it is to edit books. But we can happily suspend disbelief. In Ryeland's world, publishing is an activity that is inextricably linked with killing. The bodies keep piling up. I don't think that Horowitz has written his new novel as a response to the Alice Munro saga--the revelations seem too recent--bu...

 I think the real reason Biden annoyed me, these last several weeks, is that I myself know something about decline. I'm not in the throes of cognitive decline, but I'm dealing with hair loss. I find this completely unacceptable, but there is the evidence, in the mirror, saying, "Accept me." For some reason, Facebook began sending me ads for "Hims," which appears to be a kind of potion to "restimulate" your hair follicles. (This makes me think of Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, in "Sweeney Todd.") Also, I received an article about celebrities who have openly discussed their hair plugs. Cheyenne Jackson has admitted to attempting the "plug" route on five separate occasions; I think this candor is charming. Another celebrity says, in a defensive way, "I had all the hair I needed, it was just on the *back* of my head. I just had to take some from the back and put it on the front..." (Thus, Birnham Wood came to Dunsinane.) I ...

  A novel that knocked me over, in my youth, was "A Certain Justice," by PD James.  In that one, Venetia Aldridge, a brilliant criminal lawyer, has many, many enemies. She ruined a family by helping a rapist to evade charges. She refuses to defend a colleague's delinquent brother, etc. When PD James is in the "Justice" phase of her career, she is having enough fun that she can boldly announce, in her first sentence, "Aldridge is going to die." That cheeky narrative voice is part of the pleasure. It seems to say: "I can break the rules. I know what I'm doing." I think, today, the best "James successor" is Anthony Horowitz. I think Horowitz shares James's delight in writing. For example, look at his titles, which combine killing with a narrative or a grammatical device: "A Line to Kill." "The Twist of a Knife." "Close to Death." The new Horowitz novel describes a group of neighbors on a shared bac...

 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...

  One of my favorite writers is Anthony Horowitz; he worked on TV, and in the world of children's literature, for years, but he has recently switched to "adult thriller" territory. A great Horowitz idea is to take James Bond and fill in various gaps within the Bond story. Horowitz does this by sometimes using actual scraps from the Ian Fleming archives; Horowitz will build a novel around an abandoned Fleming story. (As an unhappy schoolboy, Horowitz found comfort in Fleming novels, and you can sense the love and admiration in the new writing.) The most recent Horowitz novel--"With a Mind to Kill"--imagines Bond at the end of his wandering. The British government wants Bond in Moscow, because nefarious Soviets seem to have a dangerous plot. So Bond disguises himself as a communist, and he tries to unearth secrets while also preserving his own life in tricky situations. There are "set-piece" moments: a battle in the Soviet subway, a showdown in the Berli...

  Anthony Horowitz has been a sensation for many years -- with "Magpie Murders," "The Word Is Murder," "The Sentence Is Death," and so on. These books generate buzz, and they fly from store shelves. Finally, I've found my way to Horowitz -- because his new book, "A Line to Kill," is among the Top Ten Thrillers of the Year, in the NYT. "A Line to Kill" is a title with a funny meaning: The villain, and victim, in this novel, is so unpopular that there might actually be a "long line" of people hoping to kill him. The villain is Charles, a wealthy resident of a remote island, and he hosts various writers at his mansion for a second-rate literary festival. Charles is unloved basically because he wants to "turf" the island; he thinks removing various beautiful natural sites will make the island into a technological powerhouse. Also, Charles's wife is having many affairs and (maybe) hoping to profit from a life-insu...