Close to Death
the BRAND NEW Sunday Times bestseller, a mind-bending murder mystery from the bestselling crime writer
-
-
4.1 • 174 Ratings
-
-
- £3.99
Publisher Description
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.
'The Lord of television mystery' LA Times
‘Anthony Horowitz is an absolutely exceptional writer’ Daniel Mays
‘Incredible plotting, richly layered and wonderfully intricate. I inhaled it' Liz Nugent
'Another delightful outing with Hawthorne and Horowitz. Each one is more inventive than the last. Keep them coming!' Shari Lapena
'Anthony Horowitz is a national treasure. Close to Death is his best book yet, a perfect combination of Agatha Christie and P.D. James’ Ragnar Jónasson
______
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?
_____________
Readers cannot get enough of Close to Death . . .
***** '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.'
***** 'An outstanding tale. I loved it.'
***** 'Honestly, the best crime read in a long time.'
__________
More love for Close to Death . . .
'Just when you thought Horowitz couldn’t further stretch his boundary-bending Daniel Hawthorne detective series, he concocts yet another way to involve readers in his story' The Washington Post
'The mystery is inventive, elegant and smart' The Telegraph
‘Sheer genius … A joy from start to finish’ Independent
‘Whodunnit heaven’ Financial Times
‘An exceedingly entertaining and inventive mixture of humour and suspense.’ Wall Street Journal
Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024
One of the Wall Street Journal’s best mysteries of 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.
Customer Reviews
Fantastic Strategy !
What a great read. So complicated, yet so clear. So convoluted, yet seemingly so simple.
For a change I “guessed” the baddie almost from the start, but doubt was forever creeping back in, and then completely thrown near the end - but not overly surprised.
I have grown to enjoy Anthony’s books so much… any character/hero will do he just gets under my skin and part of me never wants his stories to end, but they have to.
Looking forward to the next.
Brilliant read
As always this fifth book never disappoints, with its twists and turns. Captivated to the end and ready and waiting for the sixth instalment please.
Not the best in this series
I was so looking forward to reading this latest Hawthorne/Horowitz book but I was sadly disappointed. Not all like the other books. I found it very disjointed. Ok it got there in the end but definitely not as entertaining as the previous ones.