Book Review: A Line to Kill

In the third installment of the addictive series, crime novelist Anthony Horowitz writes a fictional version of himself as a sidekick to private detective Daniel Hawthorne — the Watson to Sherlock Holmes and the Hastings to Hercule Poirot — who is called on to investigate the murder of a Charles le Mesurier, whose gambling company is the sponsor of a literary festival the duo have come to attend on the island of Alderney, along with a quirky gathering of other writers that includes a children's author, a French performance poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic and a war historian. Essentially a cozy, locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a slick, snappily written riddle of a story that combines the rich history of its setting with a thrilling tale full of cleverly placed clues and devlish misdirections that doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel, but the results of which are undeniably effective, not to mention aided by a generous dose of self-deprecating humour at the expense of the author. Top-notch and deliciously twisted storytelling that pays homage to the Golden Age of whodunits as much as it lifts the curtain on the publishing world.