A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz Review: A Clever Meta Mystery with Hawthorne and Horowitz

Read time: 4 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio
📢 Narrated by Rory Kinnear — ARC from NetGalley
⏱ Duration: 9 hours
🏷️ Publisher: HarperCollins
📅 Publishing Date: April 28, 2026
Genre: Cozy Mystery

Book Blurb:

The Word is Murder is being adapted into a major feature film, and Anthony Horowitz and Daniel Hawthorne are invited onto the set. But a tense production, clashing personalities, and a dead body quickly turn the movie shoot into a real-life mystery. When the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed, the real Hawthorne has to investigate whether he was the intended target. What follows is a meta, layered crime story filled with ego, suspicion, and the kind of clever plotting Horowitz does best.

Let’s talk … Murder!!!

Here’s the one thing that keeps me hooked on this series – the sheer brilliance and glorious weirdness of Anthony Horowitz making himself a character and then treating himself like the least important person in the room. This choice never gets old for me. In A Deadly Episode, we’re back with the Hawthorne and Horowitz duo, and from the very first pages, Horowitz is being gently, cheerfully sidelined by his own publisher in favor of Hawthorne, because Hawthorne is the one who actually did it, right? The act of demeaning his own fictional character just enough to make Hawthorne look like the great towering genius of the story somehow works every single time. I spent half the book feeling bad for Horowitz and the other half admiring how brilliantly he’s weaponizing that dynamic.

The premise:

The premise is delicious. The film adaptation of The Word is Murder turns into a mystery itself. A screen version of The Word is Murder already feels meta, and then Horowitz drops a murder into the middle of it like he’s casually showing off. The setting gave the story extra energy. I loved how the tensions behind the scenes mirrored the actual investigation. It all felt like a puzzle box built by someone who knows exactly how to keep the readers slightly off balance. The longer the book is, the happier I am because more pages means more time in this world, and nine hours of Rory Kinnear’s narration felt like a gift I didn’t deserve but absolutely accepted. Rory gives Hawthorn that superior edge while letting Horowitz sound perfectly self-deprecating, and the audiobook feels smoother, sharper, and like a complete character because of it.

And then there’s Hawthorne’s past. We get another tantalizing crumb of Danny Hawthorne’s backstory in a just-enough way to keep you desperate for more. Every little glimpse into his childhood made me lean in harder, because I’m convinced there’s a bigger story waiting there. I’m convinced a future book will pull back the curtain fully on who Hawthorne really is, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. This is the sixth book in the series, and Horowitz is still finding new ways to deepen it. That’s not craft. That’s sorcery.

Would I recommend it?

This is a smart, playful, sharply constructed cozy mystery with a heavy dose of meta-fiction and one of the most entertaining author-as-character setup in crime fiction. I’m not even trying to be subtle. Anthony Horowitz is sheer genius , and this book is more proof of that.

Read Next — If You Loved This

• How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin — for readers who enjoy playful, contemporary cozy mystery setups.
  Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead – A locked-room mystery with theatrical flair that scratches the same “brilliant, slightly unhinged detective” itch. If Hawthorne fascinates you, Joseph Spector will too.
  Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie — For the classic side of the same brainy, clue-filled tradition that Horowitz is clearly playing with.
  Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Appeal by Janice Hallett — Told entirely through emails, texts, and play scripts, this one’s a wickedly smart whodunit that feels like piecing together a conspiracy yourself.
  Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton — A dazzling locked-room mystery where you relive the same day in different bodies to solve a murder; pure meta-fiction genius with clues hidden in plain sight.
  Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy

“Elementary, Dear Reader” What Do You Think?

If Anthony Horowitz showed up on a film set and a murder happened, would you trust Hawthorne or Horowitz to solve it first? And more importantly. Are you as obsessed with this series as I am? Drop your thoughts below, I want ALL the takes.

Book Links:

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🇨🇦 Indiebookstores.ca | 🌍 Bookshop.org
📖 Track & discover: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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