"The Word Is Murder" by Anthony Horowitz

An audio book.

Diana Cooper (in her 60s) goes to a funeral director to arrange her funeral. Within 6 hours she's dead at home, found by a cleaner (Andrea, who has a criminal record) days later.

Horowitz, wanting to be thought of as more that a writer of children's fiction, has written a Sherlock Holmes book. His ex-policeman contact Hawthorn has been called in to investigate the Cooper case and asks Horowitz if he wants to write a book about it. Horowitz declines at first, then remembers that he turned down a chance to do "Mamma Mia". Horowitz insists that he needs to know more about Hawthorne first - married? favourite football team? - but Hawthorne is resistant. Hawthorne doesn't like Horowitz's first chapter - this book's first chapter.

Cooper had a famous acting son, Damien. When 52 she killed a twin and injured the other in a driving accident at Deal. She got off lightly.

They visit Judith Godwin, mother of brain-damaged Jeremy, 18. Mary O'Brien is still his carer.

They visit Damien. He has a wife and young child. He received a txt from his mother in her last hour, saying that she'd seen a significant male.

Hawthorne interrupts a meeting Horowitz is having with Spielberg and Jackson (about a TinTin film) to take him to Cooper's funeral. At the funeral, "The wheels on the bus" plays from the coffin. It was the twins' favourite song. The father of the twins becomes the prime suspect. Damien is killed soon after the funeral. Hawthorne gets the twins' father and their nanny that they were lovers - a contributing factor to the accident. Somebody tries to set the judge's house alight. They visit Damien's wife, who's with her father. She was neglected by Damien. She gets all his property and money.

Anthony visits the funeral director who paralyses him while he tells him what happened. He was Damian's rival at RADA. He tells Anthony how he killed Diana to get Damien back to England so he could kill him. Hawthorne arrives and saves Anthony - "You should have stuck with your stupid children's books," says the funeral director, who kills himself. The twin's death had little to do with it. Anthony and Hawthorne still don't much like each other though they're useful to each other and respect each other's skills. It's an interesting, edgy relationship.

Other reviews

• writerinahat (Author self-inserts are an age old trope and can be done to good effect. But I find them, to put it bluntly, uncomfortable. I feel like I’m simultaneously being lectured to by a real person while witnessing a caricature of said real person playing out the real person’s secret fantasies. ... The meta humour, the choice of a self-insert, and the bait-and-switch narrator were all intentional to build to this punchline. ... The plot is a story about revenge, and the book itself is a petty tool for revenge.)
• cafethinking ( The far more interesting aspect of the book and what makes it worth reading (for it is definitely that) is how Horowitz the writer, Horowitz the narrator and Horowitz the character work together as a kind of writerly and incredibly meta trinity.)
• debbish