Close to Death
the BRAND NEW Sunday Times bestseller, a mind-bending murder mystery from the bestselling crime writer
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4.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE STOCKS LAST – THE SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION: features a gold foiled design underneath the dust jacket and is exclusive to the first print run in the UK only
How do you solve a murder... when everyone has the same motive? From global bestselling Anthony Horowitz, a brilliantly entertaining new mystery in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series.
‘Easily the greatest of our crime writers’ Sunday Times
‘[Horowitz is] a master puppeteer’ The Times
‘Incredible plotting, richly layered and wonderfully intricate. I inhaled it' Liz Nugent
'A clever murder mystery…playful and twisty. Nobody does this crime fiction better than Anthony Horowitz’ Crime Time FM
‘Spectacularly good fun, wickedly clever, with a pinch of the macabre, this is everything you could wish for from one of our top crime writers.’ The Sun
'Another delightful outing with Hawthorne and Horowitz. Each one is more inventive than the last. Keep them coming!' Shari Lapena
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Richmond Upon Thames is one of the most desirable areas to live in London. And Riverview Close - a quiet, gated community – seems to offer its inhabitants the perfect life.
At least it does until Giles Kenworthy moves in with his wife and noisy children, his four gas-guzzling cars, his loud parties and his plans for a new swimming pool in his garden.
His neighbours all have a reason to hate him and are soon up in arms.
When Kenworthy is shot dead with a crossbow bolt through his neck, all of them come under suspicion and his murder opens the door to lies, deception and further death.
The police are baffled. Reluctantly, they call in former Detective Daniel Hawthorne. But even he is faced with a seemingly impossible puzzle.
How do you solve a murder when everyone has the same motive?
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Readers cannot get enough of Close to Death . . .
***** 'All said and done, this book was yet another hole in one thanks to the virtuoso-like skill of Mr. Horowitz himself.'
***** 'Wow, this has got to be my favourite detective series ever! It’s Agatha Christie on steroids!'
***** 'I had so much fun reading this book.'
***** 'Horowitz switches up the format, keeping this series fresh, and delivers yet another outstanding tale. I loved it.'
***** 'Honestly, the best crime read in a long time.'
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More love for Close to Death . . .
‘Sheer genius … A joy from start to finish’ Independent
‘Whodunnit heaven’ Financial Times
'An absolutely engrossing tale ... Kudos to anyone who can figure this one out!’ Starred Booklist
‘An exceedingly entertaining and inventive mixture of humour and suspense.’ Wall Street Journal
'Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.’ Kirkus Reviews
'Turns the closed-circle mystery inside out’ New York Journal of Books
'The master of the mystery' Style
'The king of the clever whodunnit' Good Housekeeping
'A delirious concoction that transplants a Christie-style mystery into the present' Crime Time
‘An excellent entertaining thriller’ The Afterword
Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the intriguing if uneven fifth installment of Horowitz's Hawthorne and Horowitz series (after The Twist of a Knife), the author again blends mystery and metafiction to examine a murder in an exclusive London cul-de-sac. After the obnoxious Giles Kenworthy is slain with a crossbow in his home among the ritzy mansions of Riverview Close, police detective Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, John Dudley, jump on the case. At first, owing to Kenworthy's lack of popularity among his neighbors, Hawthorne and Dudley float the idea that it was a collaborative killing in the tradition of Murder on the Orient Express. Then one of their key suspects dies in an apparent suicide, and the case shifts into locked-room mystery territory, with a single killer likely picking off Riverview Close peers one by one. Horowitz again inserts himself in the narrative, working with Hawthorne to turn the case into a proper novel, but he writes much of this volume in third person, turning to his own voice only occasionally to comment on genre conventions or tease the mystery's conclusion. The result is a narrative of frames within frames that gradually loses entertainment value as a fair play mystery and ultimately slips into something far more jumbled. There's plenty of ambition on display, but this isn't up to series standards.
