too close for comfort

Anthony Horowitz has a problem. His publisher is expecting another book about police consultant Hawthorne. Usually, Horowitz follows along as Hawthorne investigates a murder and takes notes, telling the story of the investigation in real time. But he hasn’t heard from Hawthorne in a while, and he hadn’t been a big fan of Horowitz’s last book about him. So he decides to go rogue and write about an old case of Hawthorne’s.

Years before Horowitz had met the detective, he had worked on a murder in Riverside Close. It was a small neighborhood, where everyone had lived for many years and had been longtime friends. Well, almost everyone. Giles Kenworthy and his family were the last to move in. And they immediately started to disrupt the peace and quiet of the neighborhood. They parked their cars in a way that made it more difficult for the others to access their cars. They let their kids run roughshod over the gardens. They were noisy overnight, when the rest of the residents were trying to sleep. And they planned to put in a pool, which would affect the noise level of the close as well as destroy some beautiful trees.

The residents planned a get-together where the longtime residents could try to start a conversation with the Kenworthys, to try to talk out of some of the issues they had been having. But the Kenworthys couldn’t make it at the last minute, and the rest of the residents were left together to talk about them, with the help of copious amounts of alcohol.

Then one day, Giles is shot with a crossbow bolt. The police call in Hawthorne for help, and he brings his partner at the time, John Dudley. But when another resident of the close dies, apparently by suicide, the police let Hawthorne and Dudley go, saying the resident had killed Giles and then killed himself from guilt.

But Hawthorne knew better. This was not a murder and a suicide. It was two murders. And he wasn’t about to let the police fire him without his going in and solving the murders himself.

When Hawthorne found out that Horowitz was planning on writing about this case, he was not happy about it. He wasn’t on board about his writing about an older case, but he was adamant that it not be this one. But of course, that made Horowitz dig his heels in even more that this was the case. It was in an upper class neighborhood, and a close one, meaning that it was similar to a locked-room mystery, as it was probably someone who lived in the close who was the murderer. That meant a limited number of suspects. But that still didn’t help him figure out who the killer was before he followed Hawthorne’s notes to the end.

But as much as Horowitz wants to figure out who the murderer is, he wants to know more about Hawthorne. He has always felt at a loss up against the detective, who kept his personal life—and even parts of his professional life—locked away from the writer. But when Horowitz starts digging around in that mystery, he finds that he may have overstepped and damaged his relationship with the detective in a way he can’t repair.

Close to Death is the fifth book that explores the crime-solving partnership of Hawthorne and Horowitz as well as their very particular relationship. The more of these that I read (which is all of them, as soon as I can), the more I see the relationship between Horowitz and Hawthorne changing. The mysteries are always detailed and diabolical, but it’s that relationship that gives these books their underlying depth. I first fell in love with the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was around 12, and these Hawthorne books remind me of those, but modern and filled with surprises and secrets.

In Close to Death, I liked how Horowitz was writing about an older case, trying to figure out how to write about people he’d only met through interview notes and recordings. I liked the closed-room concept of the crime. But I did want more Hawthorne in the story. It felt like he didn’t have as much of a voice in this one. However, it was still an amazing mystery novel and leaves a lot of questions open for the next book, which I am already waiting for. I don’t think I would recommend starting to read the series with this one, but if you’ve already had a chance to meet Hawthorne and Horowitz, then you’ll want to jump right in.

Egalleys for Close to Death were provided by Harper through Edelweiss, with many thanks.