A LINE TO KILL by Anthony Horowitz

 

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz is a 2021 continuation of the Horowitz-Hawthorne series of mysteries. I  had recently enjoyed the London theatre setting in his The Twist of A Knife and had seen of his televised contributions such as The Magpie Murders. Once again Horowitz is the real author and also appears in the book as the writer who is following ex-detective Daniel Horowitz around while he solves more cases.

 

In this outing the pair is invited to attend a literary festival to promote their next to be published novel. The event is to take place on the quaint little English channel island of Alderney. It is an interesting and exotic location that still bears the scars of being taken over by the Germans during WWII and I was a bit disappointed that more about this history might was not incorporated.    

 

Shortly after the pair arrive, the rich resident who has bankrolled the festival is murdered. He has also been at the center of an ongoing fight to put a new electrical line from France that will result in environmental and historical destruction in exchange for lower rates. This leaves motives a-plenty for island residents to consider murder and it is complicated by previously unknown connections to the victim from among the invited literary guests.

 

Alderney is such a peaceful place that there is no upper-level constabulary on the island to handle murder, so a pair of investigators must be dispatched from Guernsey to handle the case. Even though Hawthorne is no longer with Scotland Yard, the DI sent over gives semi-official carte blanche to him to work the case and work it he does.

 

With befuddled writer and hanger-on Horowitz doing little other than wondering how he might write a book about the case, I kept bogging down in the narrative. It takes a lot of pages to set up the opening scenes and even the second murder of the first victim’s wife isn't much help. The narrative begins to pick up a bit as w head for the conclusion, but the final twists are so complex that it takes a whole series of chapters to tie things up. Coincidences are a part of fiction as well as real life, but there are just too many in this one for me to swallow. I give it a 2 out of 5 and in a publishing world inundated with crime fiction, Horowitz’s output won't be on my "have-to-read pile" any longer.