Enter: Diana Cowper, a sixtyish Londoner, who begins our story with an unusual event that should really be termed as an ending. Diana enters into a neighboring funeral home to plan her own funeral. Before her signature is barely dry on the funeral forms, Diana enters once more into her London home. And the word is murder spelled out brutally for Diana. Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me." This book was yet another great novel that slid down my hopeless TBR list and sat collecting virtual dust in my ‘currently reading’ folder for well over a year. The upside to that is that now I don’t have to wait for the second book to come out. It’s already on my Kindle- hopefully it won’t take me another two years to get around to reading it. 😁

HOROWITZ: Evil does have an attractive quality. I think doing something bad, being mean, breaking the law has a strange visceral appeal. Maybe it's something to do with liberty - the fact that being bad sets us free because we're not obeying rules, we're breaking them. I don't know. I mean, in my life, I try to do good, but I'm often tempted by bad. And it's certainly true that when I'm writing a book, the villain is the one that I enjoy creating most. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. A total joy. Anthony is a master entertainer, the genius twists and turns of his writing and plot keep me on the edge of my seat.' Rory Kinnear A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. An extremely private, private detective, Daniel Hawthorne, is skilled at solving crimes by blowing up secrets and has a wealth of secrets of his own.What I understand is that this is the first of a series of crime novels starring these two gentlemen. And I'm already looking forward to the next. In the end the crime is solved and Horowitz and Hawthorne warm up to each other a tad; in fact Hawthorne pays the writer a small compliment, to Horowitz's immense pleasure. But - and what saved me was, aged about 10, first discovering the library and books, and realizing that a book is a door that can open and take you into a fantastic different world. And then, finally, it was here that I had a facility for telling stories. At that age - same age - 10, I was telling stories to the other children in the dormitory. We used to sleep, each of us in the same room - all 10 of us, whatever. And telling stories to a lot of frightened kids helped them escape, too. One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous actor - enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of his own.

Six hours after Diana Cowper, mother of famous actor Damien Cowper visits a funeral parlor to discuss plans for her own funeral, she is killed in her own home. Coincidence, or not? Was she aware of a threat to her life or was it something else entirely? A perfect detective novel in a unique style complete with an excellent twist!" ( Life Has a Funny Way of Sneaking Up On You) Funny, addictive and clever, and the crime fighting duo of Hawthorne and Horowitz are as entertaining as ever. Brilliant. I can't wait for more.' Adam HandyTherein lies the case who killed Diana, and as Hawthorne meets with Horowitz we learn that the ex detective wants Horowitz to write a book on his exploits. They develop a kind of tenuous relationship as "Tony"(by the way he hates being called that), learns more and more about the elusive Hawthorn and his uncanny ability to see clues and solutions where none seem to be apparent. It is their interchange and search for the killer which drives this story forward with quite a few twists and turns with a nice amount of shady characters with possible motives. Anthony, the narrator (a fictionalized version of the author), is approached by ex-Detective Inspector Hawthorne, with whom he worked on a television series. Hawthorne, who is in need of money, proposes that Anthony write a book about him and one of the cases he is working on in exchange for a 50/50 split of the advance and royalties. The case involves a woman who, six hours after planning her own funeral, is found murdered. Initially reluctant, Anthony agrees and proceeds to document Hawthorne’s solution of the case. They’re not called murder victim stories. They’re not called criminal stories. They’re called detective stories. There’s a reason for that. I’m taking a big risk here. If you solve this crime right now, I won’t have anything to write about. Worse than that, if you don’t solve it at all, it’ll be a complete waste of time. So getting to know you matters. If I know you, if I can find something that makes you more… human, at least that’s a start. So you can’t just brush aside every question I ask you. You can’t hide behind this wall."

A woman has already planned her own funeral, but when she is found dead six hours after she finalizes the arrangements, it has the police wondering if she planned her own death, too? Six hours after widowed London socialite Diana Cowper calls on mortician Robert Cornwallis to make arrangements for her own funeral, she’s suddenly in need of them after getting strangled in her home. The Met calls on murder specialist Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-DI bounced off the force for reasons he’d rather not talk about, and he calls on the narrator (“nobody ever calls me Tony”), a writer in between projects whose agent expects him to be working on The House of Silk, a Holmes-ian pastiche which Horowitz happens to have published in real life. Anthony’s agreement with Hawthorne to collaborate on a true-crime account of the case is guaranteed to blindside his agent (in a bad way) and most readers (in entrancingly good ways). Diana Cowper, it turns out, is not only the mother of movie star Damian Cowper, but someone who had her own brush with fame 10 years ago when she accidentally ran over a pair of 8-year-old twins, killing Timothy Godwin and leaving Jeremy Godwin forever brain-damaged. A text message Diana sent Damian moments before her death—“I have seen the boy who was lacerated and I’m afraid”—implicates both Jeremy, who couldn’t possibly have killed her, and the twins’ estranged parents, Alan and Judith Godwin, who certainly could have. But which of them, or which other imaginable suspect, would have sneaked a totally unpredictable surprise into her coffin and then rushed out to commit another murder? HOROWITZ: I had to be very careful, actually, to make sure that I was not the center of attention in this book. I am Watson, not Holmes. I'm merely the narrator, and it is Hawthorne who is the hero. And he, I'm afraid, definitely gets the best lines.And it’s a seamless blend between the actual facts of his career and the events in this novel. Horowitz has skillfully created a near-seamless blend of the his own creation and recognizable television shows and novels. For example, while he writes this book, he is supposed to be working on a follow-up to THE HOUSE OF SILK. Robin Of Sherwood: Sanctuary (By: Michael Praed,Paul Birch,Richard Carpenter,Barnaby Eaton-Jones,Andy Secombe,Nikolas Grace)