The Sentence Is Death
A Novel
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- 85,00 kr
Publisher Description
"The author turns up the suspense, the sleuths turn up the clues, and crooks end up dead all while Moriarty’s specter hovers. Anything but elementary, this clever thriller is sure to please Sherlock fans." —People
A brilliantly inventive murder mystery and compelling whodunnit by the author of the New York Times bestseller The Word Is Murder.
"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 in this compelling meta mystery.
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 this British detective mystery, he realizes that these secrets must be exposed—even at the risk of death . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Horowitz's doppelganger, also named Anthony Horowitz, once again plays Dr. Watson to PI Daniel Hawthorne's Sherlock Holmes in the British author's superb sequel to 2018's The Word Is Murder. This time the astute, if irritating, detective ropes Tony into helping him investigate the murder of high-powered London divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, who was struck on the head with a bottle of expensive wine in his home. The obvious suspect is prickly poet and novelist Akira Anno, who threatened to hit Pryce with a wine bottle in a restaurant where they ran into each other days before the murder. Pryce was representing Akira's husband in a divorce settlement in which she felt she was getting a raw deal. Other suspects emerge in the complicated case, which may have its roots in a caving expedition that Pryce and two close friends took 10 years before in Yorkshire; one of those friends died while trapped in a cave during a rainstorm. Leavening the grim story line are deliciously comic scenes in which Tony typically makes a wrong deduction or suffers a personal slight (Akira disdains him because he writes popular fiction). Horowitz plays fair with the reader all the way to the surprise reveal of the killer's identity. Fans of traditional puzzle mysteries will be enthralled.
