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A LINE TO KILL

by Anthony Horowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2021

The most conventional of Horowitz’s mysteries to date still reads like a golden-age whodunit on steroids.

Except for the atrocities of World War II, there hasn’t been a murder on the Channel Island of Alderney from time immemorial. The staging of the Alderney Lit Fest brings that streak to a decided end.

The powers that be at Penguin Random House want to send retired DI Daniel Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz, the writer who fictionalizes the mysteries Hawthorne’s solved, to Alderney. Anthony, always grousing at being treated like a second-class collaborator, is willing to go, and so, surprisingly, is the reclusive Hawthorne. The other luminaries invited to the tiny island include blind psychic Elizabeth Lovell, TV chef Marc Bellamy, war historian George Elkin, children’s franchiser Anne Cleary, and French performance poet Maïssa Lamar. No sooner have the festivities begun than Charles le Mesurier, whose online gambling company is sponsoring them, is taped to a chair, with only his right hand left free, and stabbed to death. The limited resources and competence of the local police make the case a natural for Hawthorne, who obligingly circulates among his counterparts long enough to rattle every one of the many skeletons in their closets. But he faces a serious setback when a second murder spurs Deputy Chief Officer Jonathan Torode of Guernsey Crime Services to identify a culprit Hawthorne agrees is highly plausible. How will the great detective cope with being beaten to the punch? Fans of the author’s formidable brain teasers, certain that the devil is in the details, will be a lot more confident than he is.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-06-293-816-9

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021

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13 Mystery Writers Who Are Transforming the Genre

PERSPECTIVES

CLOSE TO DEATH

by Anthony Horowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2024

Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.

What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.

Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.

Pub Date: April 16, 2024

ISBN: 9780063305649

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

More by Kathy Reichs

by Kathy Reichs

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A Line to Kill : Book summary and reviews of A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

A Line to Kill

A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery #3

by Anthony Horowitz

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' rating:

Published Oct 2021 384 pages Genre: Mysteries Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

The New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz.

When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don't expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation—or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past. Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival's other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children's author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line. When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who? Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.

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"Bestseller Horowitz's superior third mystery features former detective inspector Daniel Hawthorne and a fictionalized Horowitz in an effortless blend of humor and fair play...The often prickly relationship between the Watson-like Horowitz and the Holmes-like Hawthorne complements the intricate detective work worthy of a classic golden age whodunit. The author's fans will hope this series has a long run." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "How will the great detective cope with being beaten to the punch? Fans of the author's formidable brain teasers, certain that the devil is in the details, will be a lot more confident than he is. The most conventional of Horowitz's mysteries to date still reads like a golden-age whodunit on steroids." - Kirkus Reviews "Horowitz is a master of misdirection, and his brilliant self-portrayal, wittily self-deprecating, carries the reader through a jolly satire on the publishing world." - Booklist "Horowitz's latest reveals vulnerability in the condescending Daniel. Fans of the series or of Agatha Christie will relish this character-driven mystery set on an isolated island." - Library Journal

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Anthony Horowitz Author Biography

Anthony Horowitz is the author of the US bestselling Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder , and one of the most prolific and successful writers in the English language; he may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living author. His novel Trigger Mortis features original material from Ian Fleming. His most recent Sherlock Holmes novel, Moriarty, is a reader favorite; and his bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. As a TV screenwriter, he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle's War on PBS. Horowitz regularly contributes to a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines, and in January 2014 was awarded an OBE.

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Review: A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

The New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz. When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation—or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past. Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line. When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who? Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.

Think of this story, in fact, think of this entire series, as taking place surrounded by the rubble of the “fourth wall” that author Anthony Horowitz continually demolishes by making himself a character in his own series.

And not even the hero of it. He’s the narrator, but he’s definitely not the star of this show. That position is reserved for – really taken over by – detective Daniel Hawthorne, formerly of the London Metropolitan Police and currently working for himself and whoever is willing to pay him to figure out whodunnit when the Met is stumped.

Or when he’s way, way off their patch, as he and “Tony” are in this story.

But Hawthorne has an agenda of his own on Alderney and is just going along with this literary festival idea for the ride to a place he wants to get to anyway. And, as much as this might not be the mostly anti-social Hawthorne’s natural setting – he’s VERY good at playing whatever part is necessary to get him who and what he needs to achieve whatever he’s set out to do.

Whatever Hawthorne’s private agenda, and Tony’s anger and disappointment when he figures it out, their entire reason for being on Alderney ends up taking a back seat to murder. Specifically the murder of the man responsible for funding the literary festival, and coincidentally – or perhaps not – responsible for the current controversy that is tearing tiny Alderney apart.

Considering that Alderney has a population of around 2,000, it’s not much of a surprise that they have a police force of 3. That none of the three are actually available to work this case is a bit of an issue, but considering that no one can remember the last time there was a murder on Alderney, they’re not much missed. But the police force on the nearby islands isn’t much bigger – or much more experienced with murder. (If anyone remembers the TV series Bergerac , there’s no one like him anywhere in evidence – and this was a case that could certainly have used an experienced detective with local knowledge and no axe to grind.)

Naturally they ask for Hawthorne’s help. And just as naturally, Hawthorne assumes that Tony will tag along as chronicler, occasional foil, and, just as important from Hawthorne’s perspective, the person who will pay all the bills.

So Tony finds himself in the exact position he had no desire to be in again, serving as Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock – and one of the less ept Watsons into the bargain. Meanwhile Hawthorne is on the track of a murderer that Tony is certain no one will feel an ounce of sympathy for, making any book coming out of this case a nonstarter.

However, as their previous cases have proven, in the end Hawthorne is always right, and Tony is inevitably barking up the wrong tree when it comes to figuring out whodunnit. There might be a book in this mess after all.

In the Susan Ryeland series, that’s literal, as the classic-style mysteries of Atticus Pünd, which are included in their entirety in each book, provide clues to the more recent murder that Susan Ryeland is bumbling her way towards solving.

In the Hawthorne and Horowitz series it’s a bit more of a stretch, but still definitely there, and not just because the main characters are so obviously avatars for Holmes and Watson, albeit a Holmes who is even more sociopathic and self-absorbed than the original, leading around a Watson who is even more bumbling. Not that saying any of that doesn’t feel slightly weird, as it’s the author of the book inserting himself into the narrative as a character, which gets more than a bit meta.

But the mystery that Hawthorne is presented with in this case begins as something that Dame Agatha Christie – at least in the person of Hercule Poirot – would have had a great time solving. The victim is wealthy – and he’s an absolute bastard. The line of people wanting to murder him is long, to the point where the title of the book is a pun on the concept. Alderney is a relatively remote location, an island that can be closed so that the potential suspects are forced to remain, while the murder itself begins as a locked room murder in the victim’s own mansion.

All of those are plot elements that Christie played with more than once, and quite successfully. It’s not a surprise that another mystery writer would take those same ingredients and make something quite a bit different from them. Because, of course, nothing is quite as it seems.

Except the victim’s bastardy. That was most definitely real. And the point of quite a lot.

The case is even more complicated than it initially appeared to be. At first, it just seems difficult, but as Hawthorne digs into the lives and motives of the potential suspects, it gets deeper as well. And puts at least some of his own motives for coming to Alderney on display. A bit. As much as Hawthorne ever displays much of any part of his internal life.

Or to put it another way, once the body was discovered, the story got really fascinating really quickly. It was much more fun following Horowitz following Hawthorne as he investigated than it was hanging around as Tony groused – mostly to himself – about getting there and being there and dealing with Hawthorne and the other authors at the festival.

The other stories in this series started with murder. This one takes a while to work itself up to that sticking point. Once it does, it’s off to the races, while throwing out plenty of red herrings for the reader, along with Tony, to chew on.

Also, and very much the point, Tony may not like Hawthorne, but he is utterly fascinated by him. And so are we. So once Hawthorne is in his element, solving a mystery, the relationship between them falls into a place from which we can watch the master at his work – even if, or especially because, we can’t see where he’s heading with it until the end. Or somebody’s end. Or both.

“Tony” may not want to work with Hawthorne again. Ever. But I really hope he does.

Review: The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

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Crime Fiction Lover

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz is best known for his young adult and television writing, but we find his adult crime fiction much more appealing. Standing out from his peers, he currently has four series underway, all of which are either fiercely original, thoroughly entertaining, or both: his Sherlock Holmes pastiche, his James Bond continuation, the Susan Ryeland series ( Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), and the Detective Hawthorne series (which I prefer to call ‘Hawthorne & Horowitz’). A Line to Kill is the third Hawthorne & Horowitz mystery and marks the first of the four series to reach its third instalment.

The literary conceit that drives Hawthorne & Horowitz is that they are true crime rather than crime fiction, with Horowitz playing something of a Watson to Daniel Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes equivalent. Hawthorne is a disgraced former police inspector turned consulting detective, taciturn to the point of rudeness but with an unerring eye for detail and an infallible capacity for logical deduction. He is a rich and complex character, sharing many of the vices and virtues typical of his calling, while completely devoted to the fine art of detection. As with Conan Doyle’s stories, what elevates this series above many if not all of its competitors is Horowitz’s self-deprecating representation of himself in his narration (Watson was a fictionalisation of Doyle) and the relationship between him and Hawthorne, which (in contrast to Watson’s reverence for Holmes) is fraught with friction.

A Line to Kill is set just before the publication of The Word is Murder (the first in the series) and opens with Hawthorne and Horowitz being invited to speak at a literary festival on the tiny Channel Island of Alderney. Alderney is only three square miles in size, home to about 2,000 people, and has never had a murder… until the detective duo arrives. The novel is very much an homage to Agatha Christie , particularly the later Poirot novels, and she is mentioned both explicitly and implicitly, for example in a chapter title. Following Christie, Horowitz spends nearly a third of the narrative setting the scene for the murder: a small literary festival on a tiny island establishes a limited pool of suspects in a convincing manner; tensions concerning the construction of a Normandy-Alderney-Britain power line disturb the peace of an otherwise idyllic community; and a suitably obnoxious murder victim is presented in the form of Charles le Mesurier.

As his regular readers will know, however, Horowitz has none of Christie’s flaws as an author and there are no cardboard cut-out characters, wildly improbable murder methods, or cosy camouflaging of harsh realities of crime and harm here. Alderney does not have a standing police service and although officers from neighbouring Guernsey are flown in, they have little experience with violent crime themselves and it is only natural that they take advantage of Hawthorne’s extensive expertise by recruiting him as an unpaid consultant.

One of the fascinating features of the series is the insight it gives into Horowitz’s own life as a critically and commercially successful author (though one would never guess it from the way he is treated at the literary festival). In a similar manner, this novel provides a glimpse of life on Alderney and Horowitz does not shy away from its horrific history. Like all the Channel Islands, Alderney was occupied by the Germans during World War II and was home to several labour camps. Given its size, Alderney had a shockingly high number of slave labourers – 6,000 – many of whom were worked to death. Amongst other things, these labourers built the fortifications that are still present on the island and contribute to both the atmosphere and the plot of the novel.

When I recognised the Christie-style set-up, I immediately wondered if this was a step too far for Horowitz. The Susan Ryeland series is already an ingenious and compelling homage to the world’s most successful author of fiction and I wondered if A Line to Kill would blur the boundaries between the two series. It does not and each in is, in its own unique way, providing contemporary crime fiction with a much-needed revitalisation.

Anthony Horowitz recently joined us to talk about six of his favourite crime classics.

Century Print/Kindle/iBook £15.45

CFL Rating: 5 Stars

WELCOME TO CRIME FICTION LOVER

The case of the bereaved butler by cathy ace, pay dirt by sara paretsky, on the radar: great crime reads for april 2024, recent comments, black wolf by juan gómez-jurado, nordic murders season 4 on walter presents.

Book Reviews

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz – Book Review

Published 17/09/2021 · Updated 17/09/2021

A Line to Kill A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book Three

‘I couldn’t see the sea from my bedroom but I could hear the waves breaking in the distance. They reminded me that I was on a tiny island. And I was trapped.’

There has never been a murder on Alderney.

It’s a tiny island, just three miles long and a mile and a half wide. The perfect location for a brand-new literary festival. Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne has been invited to talk about his new book. The writer, Anthony Horowitz, travels with him.

Very soon they discover that all is not as it should be. Alderney is in turmoil over a planned power line that will cut through it, desecrating a war cemetery and turning neighbour against neighbour.

The visiting authors – including a blind medium, a French performance poet and a celebrity chef – seem to be harbouring any number of unpleasant secrets.

When the festival’s wealthy sponsor is found brutally killed, Alderney goes into lockdown and Hawthorne knows that he doesn’t have to look too far for suspects.

There’s no escape. The killer is still on the island. And there’s about to be a second death…

Review by Stacey

I’ll begin by saying I didn’t do my research on this book before agreeing to review it. I didn’t realise it was part of a series, however, it works as a standalone.

The story is unlike anything I have ever read before, given that the author has written himself as one of the characters. Anthony Horowitz has written a book featuring ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne is quite a reserved character and the two seem to have a strained relationship. The publishers would like the pair to go to a literary festival on the island of Alderney and do a Q&A session.

Once there it isn’t long before a murder occurs, the first one to ever take place on the island. With the two seasonal police officers no longer on the island and the local bobby at home with a bad back, Hawthorne is asked to take a look at the scene whilst they await help. When the detectives do arrive they have every faith in Hawthorne and allow him to run a parallel investigation to their own.

When I began the book I was a little unsure of the way it was written, it feels quite like a memoir in that everything is recalled and the author talks directly to you about what is happening. At first, I read two chapters and put it down but a week later I picked it up again and began reading and didn’t stop for the next few hours.

It took a while to get to the first murder scene which would normally annoy me, but given I hadn’t read the first two books it was nice to get to know the characters and immerse myself in the festival and the lives of the writers, staff, and visitors there.

The idea of setting the story on a tiny island is fantastic, as it heightened the tension knowing that the murderer couldn’t get away and must be one of the people at the festival.

I loved the banter between the characters and the weird relationship between Horowitz and Hawthorne, it is like they disliked each other but knew they had to work together. I enjoyed the twists in the story of how some of the characters knew one another. Hawthorne reminded me of Sherlock Holmes the way he analyses a scene and likes to point out things others will have missed.

A Line to Kill is a gripping, entertaining, and ingenious novel. I now have some catching up to do with the previous books in the series. If you are a thriller/detective lover grab a copy of this book, it really is as intriguing and interesting as that cover looks.

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Author Info

Anthony Horowitz , OBE is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as “The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century.” (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009.

On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled the House of Silk.

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It’s always annoying when you realise you’ve accidentally started mid-series – and then great when the book still manages to be awesome. Glad you enjoyed it.

This sounds like my kind of book and a tasty read. Thank you for sharing the info, he is a new name to me. I ran to Netgalley and put in a request.

Thank you Scookie. I know what you mean. Some books don’t make it obvious that they are part of a series.

Thanks DJ. I can’t believe you have never heard of the author. Glad you have also gotten yourself a copy.

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Review: 'a line to kill,' by anthony horowitz.

Like any good mystery, Anthony Horowitz's "A Line to Kill" has a gripping story, quirky characters who might be devious or might be innocent, a twisty plot, an enigmatic detective and a memorable setting.

But it also has something else: sly humor, most of it at the expense of the author.

"A Line to Kill" is the third in a series of mysteries that feature Horowitz as himself — or, more precisely, as an exaggerated, comic version of himself.

Horowitz is a bestselling British author, creator of the BBC television shows "Foyle's War" and "Midsomer Murders" and the author of the popular Alex Rider novels for teens.

The fictionalized Horowitz is all of those things — as well as a little pompous, a little overly confident, a little vain and wholly unable to solve any mystery despite having written dozens of them. He also has a lot of trouble keeping his mouth shut.

In the first book in this series, "The Word Is Murder," Hawthorne suggested that Horowitz (whom he calls "Tony," perhaps innocently, perhaps to needle him) shadow him while he investigates a murder and then write a book about it; they would split the proceeds. This was the premise for the second book, as well, "The Sentence Is Death."

In "A Line to Kill" both men are invited to a writers festival on Alderney, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of England, despite the fact that Horowitz is way behind schedule with his manuscript and they have no book to promote.

The other writers at the festival are not exactly household names — a children's writer, a French poet, a blind psychic, a dreary historian and a yammering TV chef with a cookbook to hawk.

"I haven't heard of any of them," Horowitz grumbles.

The festival organizer explains, "We invited lots of famous authors — Philip Pullman, Val McDermid, Jacqueline Wilson, Alexander McCall Smith — but they all turned us down." Sorry, Tony.

Once on the island, the writers gather for a glittering party at the Gatsby-esque home of the local millionaire mover and shaker, a handsome, swaggering man named Charles le Mesurier. "This wasn't just a home," Horowitz notes. "It was a monument to himself."

Le Mesurier is one of the prime backers of a planned power line that will run from France to England, cutting across the island, destroying graveyards and homes, endangering wildlife — and making him piles of money.

So when le Mesurier is murdered a few pages later, it's anyone's guess who did it — there is, as the title suggests, a whole line of people waiting their turn to off him.

Horowitz (the real one) has a lot of fun with this book, dropping clues and red herrings, unraveling the story slowly, ending it — and then ending it again. Along the way he pokes fun at writers and readings and literary festivals and, most of all, at himself. Seriously, get in line for this one. It's terrific.

Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune's senior editor for books. @StribBooks Email: [email protected]

A Line to Kill

By: Anthony Horowitz.

Publisher: Harper, 375 pages, $27.99.

Freelance writer and former Star Tribune books editor Laurie Hertzel is at [email protected].

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A line to kill : a novel

In 2018, readers discovered the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s new Hawthorne & Horowitz mystery series: The Word is Murder . In it, disgraced Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is asked by Scotland Yard to consult on a case and he, in turn, approaches television writer Anthony Horowitz with a proposition: shadow him while he solves the mystery, and then write everything into a novel. Horowitz, a version of the author, resists. He doesn’t really care much for Hawthorne, and it certainly isn’t how he works when writing. But the case on which Hawthorne is working is simply too intriguing to pass up. Horowitz agrees, although he questions himself repeatedly regarding this decision, even as he goes on to follow Hawthorne as he investigates the murder of a celebrity-divorce attorney who was found bludgeoned to death with a £3,000 bottle of wine in their second case together, The Sentence is Death . Now the pair are back to solve another mystery in A Line to Kill.

As the first collaborative effort between Horowitz and Hawthorne is nearing publication, their publisher receives an invitation for the two to attend the inaugural literary festival on Alderney, a small island just off the southern coast of England. While Horowitz normally enjoys attending these types of gatherings, he wonders how Hawthorne will respond to the request. Unexpectedly, Hawthorne agrees enthusiastically. Soon, the two men are making their way to the festival for a quiet literary weekend. Everything is going well, until the first murder victim is discovered. . .

In A Line to Kill , his third Hawthorne & Horowitz outing, Anthony Horowitz sends his fictional doppelganger, along with former Detective Inspector, now Private Investigator, Daniel Hawthorne to a small literary festival. Horowitz has populated the festival with the required group of interesting potential suspects : a children’s author, a French performance artist and poet, a television chef who has written his first cookbook, a blind psychic, a WWII historian, the festival organizer, who is married to the leader of the committee overseeing a contentious power project for the island, a husband and wife team who own/operate online gambling sites and are the festival’s sponsors, and a person from Hawthorne’s past, who was instrumental in his leaving Scotland Yard.

Setting the location on a small island, Horowitz exploits the small town/village trope of the residents knowing everyone else (and everyone else’s business) while the local police are woefully unprepared for dealing with a murder, which has never happened before on the island. The result is a set of circumstances that will challenge Hawthorne and Horowitz in ways readers have not yet experienced. It also provides Horowitz the opportunity to learn more about Hawthorne, who has always been particularly tight-lipped about himself and his past. Each new book in the series provides just a bit more information about Hawthorne. While readers will get some questions answered, others will be raised regarding the mysterious detective.

Horowitz, the real one and not his fictional counterpart, has created a riveting combination of golden-age whodunit and contemporary concerns, sensibilities and motivations. The result is a page turner that will leave readers anxious for the next installment in the series.

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, a line to kill.

British author Anthony Horowitz may be best known for creating terrific television series that have become global hits, such as “Foyle’s War” and “Midsomer Murders . ” He also is a bestselling author who has written some of the most cunning mysteries in recent memory. His prior release, MOONFLOWER MURDERS, involved a plot that featured a novel-within-a-novel gimmick that was extremely clever and made for a memorable read.

Horowitz already claims to have created more fictional murders than any other writer alive. With an assertion like that, he will need to up the ante. He does just that in A LINE TO KILL, the third book in his series featuring ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne, by again inserting himself as a character in the story. Hawthorne initially approached author Anthony Horowitz to follow his investigations for the purpose of turning them into bestselling novels. They have had a few successful investigations, and Horowitz is actually putting the finishing touches on their second book at the start of A LINE TO KILL.

"A LINE TO KILL is such a satisfying read.... [It] presents a murder mystery that is readily accessible to all fans of the genre --- be it extreme crime or cozy-style!"

Horowitz’s publisher and agent approach him and Hawthorne with a proposal to attend a literary event on the isle of Alderney. Hawthorne enthusiastically agrees, and of course Horowitz follows suit. Horowitz does not know much about Alderney other than that it’s a small island with little to no crime. If you ignore the atrocities that were committed when the island was occupied during the Second World War, there hasn’t been a single murder there. We all know that’s about to change!

The Alderney Lit Festival is not a huge affair and attracts a modest number of authors, including another mystery writer, an alleged psychic medium and a famous British chef who has his own TV program. The latter, Marc Bellamy, makes quite an impression on Horowitz, who spies him throwing a tantrum and appearing to look like he has “murder in his eyes.”

While exploring the island, Hawthorne and Horowitz learn more about its infamous history involving a concentration camp run by the Nazis and the bodies of thousands of victims buried under their feet. There is one current event that is threatening to undermine and detract from the memory of all those who died there. A wealthy resident, Charles le Mesurier, is spearheading a group to bring a new power source to the island --- a proposal that has its residents at serious odds with each other.

At one point, le Mesurier finds the ace of spades on his car windshield. Horowitz is astute enough to know that this is the death card and will learn soon enough why Hawthorne is so eager to visit Alderney. While attending one of the author sessions, they see le Mesurier in the presence of Derek Abbott, who spent time in prison for pedophilia and other crimes. He walks with a cane after falling down a flight of stairs. It turns out that the arresting investigator and the person who allegedly pushed him down those stairs is none other than Hawthorne.

The stage is now set for a high-profile murder on Alderney, and readers will not have to wait long for the first body to show up: le Mesurier, who we already know had many detractors. Shortly thereafter, his wife will fall victim to possibly the same murderer, now pushing Hawthorne and Horowitz into full investigation mode --- and potentially supply fodder for a third novel of their exploits to please their publisher.

At one point early in the investigation, Hawthorne turns to Horowitz and states, “There are an awful lot more than six people who wanted him dead… It’s a line to kill if ever I saw one.” Readers can now sit back and follow along with the investigation while simultaneously playing home sleuth. There will be the expected misdirection and red herrings to keep the plot humming along at a nice pace.

A LINE TO KILL is such a satisfying read. I especially enjoy that Anthony Horowitz is able to jump from a complex novel like MOONFLOWER MURDERS back to the Hawthorne & Horowitz series, which presents a murder mystery that is readily accessible to all fans of the genre --- be it extreme crime or cozy-style!

Reviewed by Ray Palen on October 29, 2021

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

Publication Date: October 18, 2022
Genres: Fiction , Mystery
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN-10: 0062938150
ISBN-13: 9780062938152

Book review: A Line to Kill — by Anthony Horowitz

Nov 10, 2021 | Arts & Leisure

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A Line to Kill: A Novel (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book 3)

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A Line to Kill: A Novel (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book 3) Kindle Edition

"Horowitz is a master of misdirection, and his brilliant self-portrayal, wittily self-deprecating, carries the reader through a jolly satire on the publishing world." — Booklist

Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line.

When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?

Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.

Book 3 of 5 Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries
Print length 384 pages
Language English
Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
Publisher Harper
Publication date October 19, 2021
File size 2079 KB
Page Flip Enabled
Word Wise Enabled
Enhanced typesetting Enabled
See all details
Next 3 for you in this series $43.65
All 5 for you in this series $72.13

Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries Book 3 image

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Editorial Reviews

"The most conventional of Horowitz’s mysteries to date still reads like a golden-age whodunit on steroids." — Kirkus Reviews

“[D]eliciously shifty . . . brilliant.” — Toronto Star

“ A Line to Kill is utterly entertaining and a magnificent pleasure.” — Winnipeg Free Press

About the Author

ANTHONY HOROWITZ is the author of the US bestselling Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder , and one of the most prolific and successful writers in the English language; he may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living author. His novel Trigger Mortis features original material from Ian Fleming. His most recent Sherlock Holmes novel, Moriarty , is a reader favorite; and his bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. As a TV screenwriter, he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle’s War on PBS. Horowitz regularly contributes to a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines, and in January 2014 was awarded an OBE.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08THPZZ97
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper (October 19, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 19, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2079 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
#20 in British & Irish Humor & Satire
#91 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store)
#112 in Fiction Satire

About the author

Anthony Horowitz

Welcome to my Amazon author page. It's strange to think that when I wrote my first book, there was no Amazon - in fact there was no internet, no computers. That doesn't make me particularly old. It just shows how quickly times have moved.

In fact I wrote my first book when I was ten, stuck in a miserable, north London boarding school where reading and telling stories were my only lifeline. Every time I write a new book, I have the same sense of urgency that I had then. I knew without any doubt that I would be an author. Perhaps it helped that I wasn't much good at anything else.

Cut forward to the present and now I have over forty-five published novels to my name. The game changer for me was Stormbreaker, the first Alex Rider adventure, published in 2000. There were eleven more books in the series - the latest, Never Say Die, was published in 2017 - and they are now being developed for TV. I have plenty of other children's books out there - I was delighted to discover my Power of Five series (Raven's Gate, Evil Star etc) on sale in a tiny bookshop in Elounda, Crete only a few days ago.

But as I grew older (and my original audience entered their twenties) I felt a need to move into adult writing. This began with two Sherlock Holmes continuation novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty, followed by my entry into the world of James Bond with Trigger Mortis. A second Bond novel is on the way. An original thriller, Magpie Murders was published last year and got some of the best reviews I've had. One of the joys of Twitter, incidentally, is that it allows readers to contact me directly and these 140-character exchanges are as valuable to me as what the professional critics have to say.

I also write for TV. After cutting my teeth on the hugely popular show, Robin of Sherwood, I moved on to work with David Suchet and his brilliant portrayal of Hercule Poirot, writing about nine or ten episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot. I was the first writer on Midsomer Murders and then went on to create Foyle's War which I worked on for the next sixteen years. Somewhere along the way, I also created a five-part series for ITV called Injustice which very much influenced the book I'm publishing now.

The Word is Murder is hopefully the start of a long-running series. It introduces a detective by the name of Daniel Hawthorne - a rather dark and dangerous man whom I actually met on the set of Injustice. At least, that's my version of events and that's what counts here because, very unusually, I actually appear in the book as his not entirely successful sidekick; the Watson to his Holmes.

The whole point of being an author is that you're in control. But here I am, writing a book in which I have no idea what's going on, following in the footsteps of a character who refuses to tell me anything. What I'm trying to do is to give the traditional whodunit a metaphysical twist. I hope, if you read it, you'll enjoy all the clues, the red herrings, the bizarre range of suspects and the occasionally violent twists. With a bit of luck you won't guess the ending (nobody has so far). But at the same time, The Word is Murder offers something more. It's a book about words as much as murder, about writing crime as well as solving it.

Do let me know what you think. I really hope you like the book. If you do, you can tweet me your thoughts at @AnthonyHorowitz. I hope to hear from you!

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Enjoyable read, in spite of being the weakest in the series

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

January 22, 2022 by KimMiE" 1 Comment

If you aren’t familiar with the Hawthorne series, it revolves around Horowitz (a character in his own novels) working with former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne to document some of his more interesting cases. Hawthorne is not the easiest person to get along with, and Horowitz often regrets the position he’s been placed in, to follow around a brilliant detective while being made to feel like an idiot, a la Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Horowitz’s publisher has signed up for a three-book deal, so presumably A Line to Kill would be the last in the series.

As the novel opens, Horowitz and his publisher are finalizing the first book in the series, The Word is Murder. Although the book is not yet in print, the publisher suggests that the duo attend a book festival on the small island of Alderney in the British Channel Islands. While he questions the benefit of attending an event before the book is in print, Horowitz nevertheless is attracted to the notion of attending a festival: “I think there’s something wonderful and reassuring about the idea that in the rush of modern life people will still come together and sit for an hour in a theatre, a gymnasium, or a giant tent simply out of a love of books and reading.” (One of the things I enjoy about Horowitz as a writer is that he wears his love of books on his sleeve.) Assuming that Hawthorne, taciturn and aloof, wouldn’t be caught dead near a festival, Horowitz is shocked that his partner agrees enthusiastically to the idea.

As you’ve probably guessed, a murder takes place during the festival, setting up a classic locked-room mystery. Before that happens, though, we’re introduced to the collection of B-list authors attending the event: a French poet, a blind psychic, a celebrity chef, a local historian, and a children’s author. We also meet obnoxious, rich local Charles Mesurier, who made his fortune in online gambling (you can almost hear the boos and hisses), and festival organizer Judith Matheson and her husband Colin, who are embroiled in a conflict with residents who are opposing the installation of a power line on the island. Additionally, a figure from Hawthorne’s past turns up on Alderney, which may explain why he was so willing to come. At times I felt that the characters set up a sort of anti-cozy mystery, the idyllic setting being populated with so many unpleasant individuals.

The novel is engaging and fun, though it felt a little flat to me. For one thing, I started to feel a mixture of pity and annoyance toward narrator Horowitz for coming off as so downtrodden (“Well, he is British,” my husband responded, when I voiced this complaint). He comes off looking foolish so often that I wanted to slap him and shout, “You write murder mysteries FFS, get a clue!” I know he’s the John Watson of this pair, but Watson didn’t write detective fiction for a living.

Second, these mysteries are never super complex, but I picked up on who the killer was pretty easily. I didn’t figure out motive or the details of the crime, but there were enough clues pointing to a particular individual that I saw the big reveal coming and impatiently turned pages, eager to confirm what I already knew. The first rule of mysteries is it’s never the most likely person, and, to be fair, Horowitz never actually expects the reader to believe the obvious choice. He bemoans his own literary assignment when he considers the presumptive guilty party: “. . .I was annoyed that when I did write the book he would end up being in it. What [most obvious guilty character] represented was completely at odds with everything I would enjoy writing about: blue telephone boxes, beaches and fortifications, seagulls, miniature steak and kidney puddings, ginger-haired taxi drivers.” While I like that passage for its charm, it also feels like Horowitz is milking it a bit.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve just read too many mysteries. Maybe I’m getting tired of meta-fiction. Maybe I’m so enamored of the Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pund series that I’ve started grading Horowitz on a curve and I find the Hawthorne series average. I’ll still read more Horowitz/Hawthorne adventures (and given the ending, it seems certain that narrator Horowitz’s publishers will somehow convince him to write a fourth installment), but I’m not setting my expectations as high as I once did.

One final nit, and this is a complaint for the publishers: The series is published by Penguin Books in the U.K. and HarperCollins in the U.S. I suspect that some of the language has been changed for American audiences. In the American version I read, they reference the rich characters going to “private school.” However, in Britain, private school means state school, whereas public school refers to what we in the U.S. would call private school. Confusing, yes, but I have read lots of books and am aware of this distinction. They flip it around in the American version, which only served to confuse me. I presume that dumbing books down for the American audience is a plot to keep Americans dumb. Knock it off, we don’t need the help. Would love confirmation of my suspicion by someone who has read the British edition.

One compliment for the publishers: The cover graphics for the American versions kick ass.

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“A Line to Kill” by Anthony Horowitz – Festival of Reckoning

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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Anthony Horowitz has solved some serious crimes as Daniel Hawthorne’s sidekick in A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, and in the third book, A Line to Kill , they get embroiled in a murder mystery with a classic setup. The story has Daniel and Anthony staying at guests on an idyllic island off the coast of England for a literary festival, one harbouring a cold-blooded killer ready to set his plan in motion.

Anthony horowitz embarks on an isolated mystery, the golden age revisited in a line to kill, piecing the clues of a grandiose puzzle, the final verdict.

No matter how far or wide the murder mystery genre tries to spread its wings, it will likely never be able to reach the pinnacle it launched itself from with the great classics. There is something timelessly comforting about investigations taking place in remote locations around a limited cast of suspects presented from the get-go, and it’s exactly the kind of situation we’re treated to in Anthony Horowitz ‘ A Line to Kill .

To give you a brief A Line to Kill summary, the third book in A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series works perfectly as a standalone work, though I do recommend you get acquainted with the first and second books as well, if only for the high-quality mysteries they bring to the table. Additionally, you would get a bit more information about the main characters, but as I said, none of it is required to understand or enjoy this novel.

In any case, the story begins by sending Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne, along with his author sidekick Anthony Horowitz, to an exclusive literary festival on the secluded island of Alderney, just off the coast of England. Essentially cut off from all civilization, they intend on simply spending a good time there, something which obviously wasn’t meant to happen; the murder-laden British countryside strikes once again.

Quite soon after their arrival, a local person of relative importance is found dead under rather mysterious circumstances, prompting them to involve themselves in this case. As a preventative measure, the island is placed on lock-down, and it quickly becomes all too apparent a murderer is lurking among the guests.

The suspects are a veritable melting pot of remarkable personalities, including a French poet, a television chef, a blind psychic, a historian obsessed with war, and a children’s author, just to name a few. The search for the culprit among them sends the ex-detective and his partner on a journey into the sordid past of the island, seemingly rearing its head and haunting the festival with its restless wails of agony.

As I mentioned at the very start of the review, there is a unique and timeless quality pertaining specifically to the great classics in the murder mystery genre, what some would label as the golden age of the Whodunit novels. Anthony Horowitz certainly isn’t the first modern author to try and recapture the magic of bygone days in his novels, but in my opinion, he is certainly one of the best at it.

To begin with, his clever idea of writing himself into the story as a sort of Dr. Watson to Daniel Hawthorne’s Sherlock, following him around and chronicling his work for the benefit of mankind. The rapport between the two is often comical in its nature, but one can easily sense the underlying strength of the bond shared between the author and his character. In other words, there is actual chemistry between the two, and as the story goes on the duo starts to feel like a single character.

As far as the setting goes, I don’t think it takes a whole lot of explaining on why it calls back to stories of yesteryear. The remote location and small cast of characters is the kind of set-up I think everyone can enjoy, limiting the nonsense to a minimum and allowing the writer to focus on the development of the investigation more than anything else.

While a few of the twists did have me raising my eyebrows a little, I would say the investigation itself is just a step below the classics of the genre, which just to be clear, is a great compliment. As might be expected, A Line to Kill doesn’t exactly bring anything new to the genre nor does it revamp old concepts. Instead, it simply attempts to offer the best experience possible within the conventions we’ve come to love for their ability to endlessly entertain us.

With this being said, Anthony Horowitz does try and expand the story a little beyond the confines of a small gathering, including a sub-plot about a conflict between locals over the construction of a power line. He connects it to the main plot quite capably and turns into more than just a side distraction, managing to leave a bit of his personal imprint on a story otherwise following the classical beats.

In my opinion, one of the most attractive aspects of Whodunit mysteries is the fact they, more often than not, allow the reader to try and solve the case along with the protagonist(s). We know as much as our investigators at the start of it all, we pick up the clues when they do, and their knowledge of the case seldom exceeds ours.

It is quite difficult to write a mystery where all the clues are present for the reader to see while still being difficult to assemble. Many authors revert to obfuscation and last-second revelations to ensure they “outsmart” the readers in the end, and I was quite glad to see Horowitz took the high road on this one. We get as fair of a shot at solving the mystery as Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, and it’ll certainly have you working your grey cells to their full potential.

Without giving too much away, the murder itself is of a locked-room type, which in and of itself presents a fascinating puzzle we are constantly pushed to think about until the answers are finally revealed. When this type of plot is done right it achieves something truly special, forcing the reader to try and unravel the workings of what seems like a magic trick. It’s a premise which hooks me in like few others, and it was handled with all the care I could wish for in A Line to Kill .

Naturally, the cast of suspects is just as important to the story as all the other elements we’ve looked at so far, especially when it’s composed of a limited number of people. At the outset, I admit I was a little skeptical when meeting them for the first time, fearing there would be too much eccentricity going around in a story which would do well to stay grounded to a certain extent.

Thankfully, Horowitz handled them with a lot of care and the first impressions eventually gave way to an interesting examination of their biographies, behaviours and roles in the story. There are plenty of clever little interactions between them and our protagonists, helping to turn them into people we can care about and relate to, rather than just a row of suspects for us to comb through. I’d say it even got the point where my attachment to certain characters made it more difficult to assess their culpability; a great feat of writing on the author’s part.

“A Line to Kill” by Anthony Horowitz (Book cover)

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz is a fantastic modern murder mystery beckoning back to the golden age of the Whodunit genre, as well as a worthy addition to A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series. It delivers a solid mystery full of twists, in an isolated location with an interesting past, as well as a defined cast of well-developed suspects; everything a novel of this genre should be. If you’re looking for a new murder mystery to read and enjoy the structure and feeling of the great classic works of the genre, then this is definitely the novel, and perhaps even the series for you.

Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz is an English author from Stanmore, Middlesex, whose family had the distinction of being of having a history worthy of a novel in and of itself, largely revolving around his father’s mysterious occupation and fortune.

At the age of twenty he began publishing professionally, and has penned numerous bestsellers including The House of Silk , Stormbreaker , Moriarty and Magpie Murders .

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David Ben Efraim (Reviewer)

David Ben Efraim is a book reviewer living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and co-owner of Bookwormex , as well as the Quick Book Reviews blog, along with Yakov Ben Efraim. With a love for literature reaching across all genres (except romance), he has embarked on the quest to share its wonders with the world by helping people find their way to books which truly speak to them, whether they be modern sensations or relics from a bygone era.

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Monday 16 August 2021

Book review: a line to kill by anthony horowitz.

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Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’

Who will be Trump’s VP? A shortlist

In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers , as a political gift.

In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog , Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.

But in 2024 Kristi Noem , a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump , the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print , Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.

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Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

On Friday, reaction to news of Noem’s description of killing her dog and her goat included satire, the Barack Obama adviser turned podcaster Tommy Vietor calling the governor “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers”, a reference to a famous serial killer and a recent scandal over Noem’s cosmetic dentistry treatment .

But most responses, particularly from dog lovers and people who hunt with dogs, simply expressed disgust.

Rick Wilson, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash”. Ryan Busse, the Democratic candidate for governor of Montana, said : “Anyone who has ever owned a birddog knows how disgusting, lazy and evil this is. Damn.”

Noem herself posted a screengrab of the Guardian report – and an admission that she recently “put down three horses”.

“We love animals,” she said, “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

The governor also said her book contained “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”.

In the book, however, she sums up her story about Cricket the dog and the unnamed, un-castrated goat with what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

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‘Civil War’: What you need to know about A24’s dystopian action movie

Kirsten Dunst holds a camera in her lowered hand while another hangs off her backpack in "Civil War."

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A24’s “Civil War,” the latest film from “Ex Machina” and “Men” director Alex Garland , imagines a third-term president ruling over a divided America and follows the journalists driving through the war-torn countryside on a mission to land his final interview. The movie is pulse-pounding and contemplative, as the characters tumble from one tense encounter to the next and ruminate on the nature of journalism and wartime photography.

In his review of the film, The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf wrote, “‘Civil War’ will remind you of the great combat films , the nauseating artillery ping of ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ the surreal up-is-down journey of ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It also bears a pronounced connection to the 2002 zombie road movie scripted by its writer-director Alex Garland, ‘28 Days Later.’”

Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as photojournalists, alongside Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson (and a scene-stealing, nerve-racking Jesse Plemons ), the film carries a reported production budget of $50 million and has already started to recoup the costs at the box office, earning $25.7 million in ticket sales in its first weekend in North America.

“Civil War” has also been a discourse juggernaut. Conversation on social media has focused on the lack of context given for the conflict at the heart of the film. In a recent column, The Times’ Mary McNamara wrote that “forcing the very real political divisions that plague this nation into vague subtext doesn’t even serve the purported pro-journalism nature of ‘Civil War.’”

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5 Takeaways From David Pecker’s Testimony in Trump’s Criminal Trial

David Pecker told jurors of a universe in which favors for celebrities were demanded and dispensed. His cross-examination will continue Friday.

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Former President Donald J. Trump walking in a blue suit, red tie and white shirt.

By Jesse McKinley and Kate Christobek

April 25, 2024

Follow our live coverage of Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan.

The criminal trial of Donald Trump featured vivid testimony on Thursday about a plot to protect his first presidential campaign and the beginnings of a tough cross-examination of the prosecution’s initial witness, David Pecker.

In his third day of testimony, Mr. Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, described his involvement in the suppression of the stories of two women who claimed to have had sex with Mr. Trump: Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, and Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose 2016 hush-money payoff forms the basis of the prosecution’s case.

Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, who has said they had a sexual encounter in 2006 and was shopping that story in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election. He has denied the charges and having sex with Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal; the former president could face probation or prison if convicted.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s seventh day on trial:

Pecker teed up falsified records charges.

As part of a so-called catch-and-kill scheme, Mr. Pecker testified that his company, AMI, paid Ms. McDougal $150,000 to purchase her story, with no intention of publishing anything about an affair with Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Pecker expected repayment. He said he asked Michael D. Cohen, who was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who would handle the reimbursement, and Mr. Cohen responded, “The boss will take care of it.”

Because Mr. Pecker had such a hard time getting Mr. Trump to pay up, he was unwilling to buy a third story: Ms. Daniels’s account of sex with Mr. Trump.

“I am not a bank,” Mr. Pecker recalled saying.

Mr. Pecker suggested that Mr. Cohen buy Ms. Daniels's story instead, leading to the hush-money deal, repayments and records at issue in this trial.

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Prosecutors painted a picture of election interference.

The prosecution’s discussion of the deal with Ms. McDougal — brokered in summer 2016 — served another purpose: trying to demonstrate that the payment was part of a scheme to influence that year’s election.

Mr. Pecker said that Ms. McDougal’s payment was disguised as a contract for services, to avoid violating campaign finance laws.

“I wanted to protect my company, I wanted to protect myself and I wanted also to protect Donald Trump,” Mr. Pecker said.

Mr. Pecker was also asked whether he believed Mr. Trump was concerned that his wife or family would find out about the affairs. But Mr. Pecker suggested that Mr. Trump’s concerns were electoral, not personal.

Trump worried about Ms. McDougal, even after his election.

Mr. Pecker told of least two instances in which Mr. Trump inquired about Ms. McDougal, referring to her at a Trump Tower meeting before he took office as “our girl.” He also asked about her during a meeting with Mr. Pecker at the White House, the publisher said.

At the Trump Tower meeting, which also included notables like James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, and Reince Priebus, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mr. Pecker reassured Mr. Trump that everything was fine.

Mr. Trump then told the group that Mr. Pecker probably “knows more than anyone else in this room.”

“It was a joke,” Mr. Pecker testified, adding, “They didn’t laugh.”

Pecker did a lot for Trump, who could be hard to please.

Mr. Pecker said on Tuesday he had agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign and used AMI to deal with threats to Mr. Trump’s reputation.

After the “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed in October 2016, featuring Mr. Trump’s boasts about groping women, one of Mr. Pecker’s editors scrubbed an AMI publication’s website of a 2008 article describing Mr. Trump as a “playboy man.”

Despite that, Mr. Trump often made his displeasure known, Mr. Pecker testified, either through Mr. Cohen or in phone calls. Mr. Pecker variously described Mr. Trump as becoming “very angry” and “very aggravated.”

Still, Mr. Pecker said he felt no ill will. “I felt that Donald Trump was my mentor,” Mr. Pecker said, adding, “I still consider him a friend.”

Cross-examination continues Friday. More names may drop.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, led by Emil Bove, started their cross-examination trying to show that such deals were “standard operating procedure” in the supermarket tabloid business and that the magazines published only about half of the stories they bought.

That offered the first intimation of the defense strategy: presenting as commonplace actions that the prosecutors have deemed criminal. The cross-examination also showed the ugly side of the tabloid trade, including the admission that Mr. Pecker’s magazines would buy stories as leverage against celebrities.

Many famous names were mentioned, including that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star-turned-Republican politician. Mr. Pecker described a 2002 meeting in which Mr. Schwarzenegger asked Mr. Pecker not to run negative stories about him before his run for governor of California. It worked: the star of “The Terminator” was elected and served from 2003 until 2011.

The name-dropping may well continue when cross-examination continues Friday.

Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering upstate New York, courts and politics. More about Jesse McKinley

Kate Christobek is a reporter covering the civil and criminal cases against former president Donald J. Trump for The Times. More about Kate Christobek

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

News and Analysis

The criminal trial of Trump featured vivid testimony about a plot to protect his first presidential campaign and the beginnings of a tough cross-examination of the prosecution’s initial witness, David Pecker , former publisher of The National Enquirer. Here are the takeaways .

Dozens of protesters calling for the justice system to punish Trump briefly blocked traffic on several streets near the Lower Manhattan courthouse where he is facing his first criminal trial.

Prosecutors accused Trump of violating a gag order four additional times , saying that he continues to defy the judge’s directions not to attack witnesses , prosecutors and jurors in his hush-money trial.

‘Where’s Cricket?’ South Dakota Gov. Noem defends killing her dog

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Friday defended a story included in her forthcoming biography in which she describes killing a family dog on their farm, to her daughter’s distress – a grisly anecdote that instantly drew criticism from a number of political opponents.

Noem, a Republican widely seen as a contender to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate, shared details about shooting the 14-month-old dog, a female wirehaired pointer named Cricket, and an unnamed goat, according to excerpts first reported by the Guardian.

An avid hunter, Noem wrote that she had hoped to train Cricket to hunt pheasant, but that she proved “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless” as a hunting dog. “I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, according to the Guardian.

It was after Cricket ruined a hunting trip, killed another family’s chickens and bit the governor that Noem recalled deciding to kill the dog; she shot Cricket in a gravel pit.

That was not the only blood Noem drew that day: She also shot a male goat that she called “nasty and mean.” Shot him twice, in fact: The goat jumped as she shot him the first time, according to the Guardian’s recounting of the book, so she fetched another shell and shot him again.

The whole ordeal was reportedly witnessed by a construction crew nearby. Noem wrote that as the workers returned to their jobs, a school bus came by to drop off her children.

Her daughter, Kennedy, Noem wrote, “looked around confused” and asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

“I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Noem wrote in the book, set to be published by Center Street on May 7. But she framed the day’s events as reflecting her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly,” whether that be in farm ownership or in politics.

The story drew condemnation on Friday from a swath of the political world, mainly to Noem’s left, including some anti-Trump Republicans and a number of Democrats. President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign wrote on X that “Trump VP contender Kristi Noem brags about shooting her 14-month-old puppy to death.” And the Democratic National Committee issued a statement describing the passages as “disturbing and horrifying.”

Noem seized on the Guardian’s article to underscore her rural-America bona fides, promote her book and mock the news media. “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote Friday on the social platform X, adding that her family recently had to “put down” three horses.

She added that her book would contain “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”

Noem, who appeared with Trump at an event in Ohio last month, is one of several Republicans regularly mentioned as potential vice-presidential picks. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, she tied with Vivek Ramaswamy for first place in a poll of whom attendees wanted to see Trump select as a running mate.

She has routinely praised the former president and recently took part in an ad promoting her cosmetic dental work that some saw as a move to catch Trump’s attention, even as it drew legal scrutiny. In recent days, she has refused to say whether she would have certified the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, and dodged questions on whether she supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape or incest.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

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COMMENTS

A Line to Kill (Hawthorne & Horowitz #3)
32,765 ratings2,979 reviews. The New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz. When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an ...
A LINE TO KILL
Fans of the author's formidable brain teasers, certain that the devil is in the details, will be a lot more confident than he is. The most conventional of Horowitz's mysteries to date still reads like a golden-age whodunit on steroids. 8. Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021. ISBN: 978--06-293-816-9.
Mysteries: 'A Line to Kill' Review
The perfect mystery for a crime novelist-turned-sleuth. "A Line to Kill," Anthony Horowitz's third murder mystery pairing a stand-in for himself (a veteran English novelist and screenwriter ...
Summary and reviews of A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
This information about A Line to Kill was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter.Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.
A Line to Kill: A Mystery Novel (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery)
A Line to Kill is the third installment in the "Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries" following The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. The previous two books have been acknowledged as strenuous attempts to reinvigorate a highly glutted genre by introducing an innovative twist in the narrative procedure where the author himself becomes the ...
Review: A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
The line of people wanting to murder him is long, to the point where the title of the book is a pun on the concept. Alderney is a relatively remote location, an island that can be closed so that the potential suspects are forced to remain, while the murder itself begins as a locked room murder in the victim's own mansion.
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz recently joined us to talk about six of his favourite crime classics. Century. Print/Kindle/iBook. £15.45. CFL Rating: 5 Stars. A Line to Kill anthony horowitz Channel Islands Daniel Hawthorne hardboiled Hercule Poirot James Bond Literary crime fiction murder mystery private detective Sherlock Holmes. 0.
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
A Line to Kill. There has never been a murder on Alderney. Its a tiny island, just three miles long and a mile and a half wide. The perfect. A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz - Book Review A Line to Kill A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book Three Author - Anthony Horowitz Publisher - Century Pages - 368 Released - 19th August 2021 ISBN-13 ...
REVIEW: 'A Line to Kill,' by Anthony Horowitz
comment. Like any good mystery, Anthony Horowitz's "A Line to Kill" has a gripping story, quirky characters who might be devious or might be innocent, a twisty plot, an enigmatic detective and a ...
Book Review
A Line to Kill ( Harper) is both a classic whodunit and locked-room mystery, but it is also a smart satire about authors and the publishing world. While it is the third book in a series, which includes The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death, it works as a standalone novel. These books uniquely feature the author as narrator and protagonist.
Book Review: A Line to Kill, Anthony Horowitz
Many thanks to Anthony Horowitz and Penguin Books for the chance to read this ARC, courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. I've really enjoyed Horowitz' crime capers in the past as he has played with the form: the Susan Ryeland series (Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders) which interpose Atticus Pund's fiction-within-a-fiction detective story within Ryeland's own ...
Book Marks reviews of A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
Rave Laurie Hertzel, The Star Tribune. Like any good mystery, Anthony Horowitz's A Line to Kill has a gripping story, quirky characters who might be devious or might be innocent, a twisty plot, an enigmatic detective and a memorable setting. But it also has something else: sly humor, most of it at the expense of the author ...
a book review by D. R. Ransdell: A Line to Kill: A Novel (A Hawthorne
The grandiose reception erases any semblance of a normal literary festival when the host is found tied to a chair quite dead. Mystery readers will be familiar with the setup. Now that there has been a murder, the island becomes a version of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. The murderer is among them.
A line to kill : a novel
A line to kill : a novel. Reviewed by Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch Library, October 25, 2021. In 2018, readers discovered the first book in Anthony Horowitz's new Hawthorne & Horowitz mystery series: The Word is Murder. In it, disgraced Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is asked by Scotland Yard to consult on a case and ...
A Line to Kill
Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England. Upon arrival, they meet the festival's other guests --- an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children's author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic and a war ...
Book review: A Line to Kill
Book review: A Line to Kill — by Anthony Horowitz. November 10, 2021. By Jenny Lyons. The third Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery, this whodunnit may be my favorite in the series. We're glad you're interested in this valuable content! Please understand that in order for us to be able to fund reporters covering local news, we need your help!
A Line to Kill: A Novel (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery, 3)
A Line to Kill is the third installment in the "Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries" following The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. The previous two books have been acknowledged as strenuous attempts to reinvigorate a highly glutted genre by introducing an innovative twist in the narrative procedure where the author himself becomes the ...
A Line to Kill
The visiting authors - including a blind medium, a French performance poet and a celebrity chef - seem to be harbouring any number of unpleasant secrets. When the festival's wealthy sponsor is found brutally killed, Alderney goes into lockdown and Hawthorne knows that he doesn't have to look too far for suspects. There's no escape.
A Line to Kill: A Novel (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book 3
A Line to Kill is the third installment in the "Hawthorne and Horowitz Mysteries" following The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. The previous two books have been acknowledged as strenuous attempts to reinvigorate a highly glutted genre by introducing an innovative twist in the narrative procedure where the author himself becomes the ...
All Book Marks reviews for A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
Like any good mystery, Anthony Horowitz's A Line to Kill has a gripping story, quirky characters who might be devious or might be innocent, a twisty plot, an enigmatic detective and a memorable setting. But it also has something else: sly humor, most of it at the expense of the author ... Horowitz (the real one) has a lot of fun with this book, dropping clues and red herrings, unraveling the ...
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
Ever since I discovered Anthony Horowitz in 2019, I've been catching up on his previously released novels and eagerly awaiting new ones. I was, therefore, delighted to see A Line to Kill, book #3 in Horowitz's Hawthorne series, gracing bookstore shelves while I was out Christmas shopping last month.I marched up to my husband and announced, "I'm buying this for my dad, but I would also ...
"A Line to Kill" by Anthony Horowitz (Review. Mystery)
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes Short Summary. Anthony Horowitz has solved some serious crimes as Daniel Hawthorne's sidekick in A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, and in the third book, A Line to Kill, they get embroiled in a murder mystery with a classic setup.The story has Daniel and Anthony staying at guests on an idyllic island off the coast of England for a literary festival ...
Book review: A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
I have shared my love for Anthony Horowitz' books throughout the years. I grew up reading Alex Rider and Power of Five , and in more recent...
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A Line to Kill: A Novel
A Line to Kill. : Anthony Horowitz. Harlequin, Oct 19, 2021 - Fiction - 432 pages. The New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz. "Horowitz is a master of misdirection, and his brilliant ...
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Enjoyable read, in spite of being the weakest in the series

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