Title:

The Sentence is Death

Author:

Anthony Horowitz

Category:

Mystery / Thriller

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

July 28, 2025

nthony Horowitz continues his mystery series of Hawthorne & Horowitz with The Sentence is Death, in which the lead character in this novel is supposed to be none other than Horowitz himself. Horowitz inserts real life people and events (such as his work on the TV series Foyle's War) into to this fictional novel about a murder mystery in London. A prominent divorce lawyer, Richard Pryce, lies dead in his home. The lawyer was repeatedly bashed in the head with a wine bottle, and when the bottle shattered, the murderer used the jagged edge of broken glass to cut Pryce's throat open. Naturally, successful divorce lawyers generate plenty of enemies, and in this case the prime suspect is a famous authoress, Akira Anno. Just a few nights earlier, in a prominent restaurant, Akira Anno dump a glass of wine over Pryce's head and threatened that next time she would use the whole bottle. And now Pryce has been murdered by a wine bottle. Case closed, right? Of course not!

Horowitz is a clever writer. He makes it seem that the books in this series are merely transcriptions of actual events, rather novels that he has dreamed up from his imagination. In reality, Horowitz does not follow around a private detective named Hawthorne investigating murder cases, but the style of the book makes it easy to believe that he does. This series is up to five books now - perhaps this framing device will grow tiresome after awhile, but for now I enjoy the way the stories are written. Book three is A Line to Kill, I will have to track down a copy and read it.

Hawthorne is only called into complicated murder cases when the police are baffled. The death of Pryce is a problem because there are too many suspects. Akira Anno seems to have an alibi for the night of the crime, she was at the house of her editor. Delving deeper into the investigation results in more suspects. It seems that twenty years ago, Pryce was part of a three man spelunking expedition that ended in tragedy when the third man drowned. Hawthorne and Horowitz learn that the second member of that caving team died in an accident at a train station just the day before Pryce was murdered. Coincidence?

Hawthorne interviews multiple suspects, and Horowitz follows along, though he finds that resents being in the "Watson" role to Hawthorne's "Holmes". Horowitz is determined to solve the case before Hawthorne can announced the perpetrator. He reviews his notes, and makes a realization that Hawthorne must have missed...but when did Watson ever solve a crime?

Horowitz's life is complicated by Detective Cara Grunshaw of the Metropolitan Police. Grunshaw loathes Hawthorne and resents that her superiors have brought him into this baffling case. Like Horowitz, Grunshaw is determined to solve the murder before Hawthorne can. Unfortunately, Grunshaw uses her police authority to coerce Horowitz into spying for her - Horowitz must report to her all the Hawthorne uncovers.

There is not a lot of action scenes in this novel. There is one brief chase sequence where Horowitz is in a cab trying to follow a suspect, but that chase ends when the taxi Horowitz is in gets stuck at a red light (it is plot developments such as that which give the novel it sense of "reality" - in a typical novel, chase scenes end in dramatic fashion). However, despite the limited action, the plot is intriguing and I kept reading until all was revealed at the end. Horowitz is very good at inventing a mystery, and then throwing red herrings at the reader until the final unmasking. I like these books.