Divorce attorney Richard Pryce has been killed, bludgeoned and then stabbed with a very expensive bottle of wine, not long after being threatened by the wife of a client in a busy London restaurant. The award-winning literary fiction author poured a glass of wine on him, saying she wished that she’d had a bottle. But if he had actually been killed by her, would the police had to have called private investigator Daniel Hawthorne in to investigate? Clearly, things in this case are not as simple as that, so Hawthorne called his friend Anthony Horowitz to join him for another investigation, and another book.

Hawthorne and Horowitz question Pryce’s husband, his client and his ex-wife (the author who had threatened the lawyer), his colleague, and his friends, but it’s not until Horowitz notices a small unrelated piece in the local paper that they realize the murder could be due to a caving accident from Pryce’s past. Add in a manipulative police detective, a little bit of literary snobbery, shooting problems for his television show Foyle’s War, a book club meeting, some near shoplifting, an unlikely computer hacker, and Hawthorne’s irritating way of always being a step ahead in solving the case, and you have The Sentence Is Death.

The follow-up to The Word Is Murder, this clever murder mystery plays with reality by Horowitz using himself and some real aspects of his life in these novels while making up the crimes to solve and the relationship between himself and Hawthorne. I know some find the author’s use of himself in the novels as off-putting, but I find these to be fun and engrossing, a sort of satire of the Sherlock Holmes stories I loved so much as a kid. Horowitz slyly makes himself the butt of the jokes, as he has a tendency to get everything wrong as he and Hawthorne work on the case. I think that’s the only way that these stories could work, and Horowitz is especially astute as he plots these novels out. I hope that more are forthcoming.

I listened to this on audio, narrated by Rory Kinnear with a brilliant ease. There is something about his voice that makes me feel like I am there, in that moment with Hawthorne and Horowitz as they masterfully weave their way through the suspects and put the puzzle together. I highly recommend these as audio books. The adventure comes to life, and I am transported to modern England, a trip I will always take when given the opportunity.

Galleys for The Sentence Is Death were provided by Harper through Edelweiss, but I bought the audio book myself through Audible, with many thanks.