A Line to Kill: a locked room mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling author (Hawthorne Book 3)

Third in the series and they continue to be very clever and very readable.The plot is suitably twisty as to be difficult to work out whodunit. Yet again I failed.I enjoyed it immensely.

An Interesting Story set on the island of Alderney. There were lots of interesting characters and a storyline with quite a number of twists and and and an unexpected ending. I had some difficulty with the style of writing being a story about a story.

Lots of red herrings until culprit finally revealed. Enjoyable easy read. Obviously fourth book to follow. Looking forward to reading it too.

Been to Alderney a few times. Context for the book is spot on!

The first book in this series was excellent as a detective story and also a really interesting exploration of how writing and crime-writing work, difference between fiction and auto-biography etc. The second book was interesting but less gripping in both areas.This third book was adequate, but it feels as if the author has said everything he wanted to say on the topic and that his inventiveness and interest has now gone into the MAgpie Murders series instead,Plus very misleading strap=line. This is in no way a locked room mystery, wither in the literal sense or in the extended sense.Felt like the necessary third book in the three-book contract situation he keeps talking about, so really suprising to find the end leads into a fourth book - and that I am not excited by that.The author is big on homage and literary pastiche but in the last couple of books this often drifts into lazy writing and caricature.I loved the first book and have felt increasingly disappointed by the follow ups.

Rating: 4.2/5Once again, Anthony Horowitz has penned another hugely entertaining read in this third book of the Hawthorne & Horowitz series. For those people who have not read the first two books ("The Word is Murder" and "The Sentence is Death"), I would say that while it would be nice to have read them prior to reading this one, it is by no means a necessity.If you are unfamiliar with the series, here is a quick background précis. Anthony Horowitz has applied a neat little twist on the genre and appears in his own novels as the sleuthing sidekick to ex-police detective Daniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne now works privately as a consultant to the investigating police force on certain problematic crimes. Anthony Horowitz has been employed by Hawthorne to write up his cases, much as Dr Watson was tasked with chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The duo do, at times, exhibit characteristics similar to those found in other literary detective teams such as Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, but it is the comparison with a latter day Holmes & Watson that is generally most fitting.On this occasion Hawthorne & Horowitz find themselves on the island of Alderney as guests at the local literary festival, but when a local bigwig is murdered, Anthony Horowitz once again finds himself observing the investigating prowess of Daniel Hawthorne.There is very much a sense of a "Golden Age" whodunnit about this mystery. The isolated location, the cast of characters and even the inclusion of the map of the island at the beginning of the book are very much in keeping with the works of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, et al. As he invariably seems to do, Anthony Horowitz (the author rather than his own creation in this book) has constructed a wonderfully engaging and clever murder mystery in the "locked room" style, with plenty of misdirection and not a little humour. The clues are all there - you just need to piece them together.

Why did I buy this book? Was it before after I persevered with The Word is Murder? Maybe I was hoping the story would be improved, the writing would enhance the experience and I would understand how this style works. None of that happened. I feel cheated and manipulated. This is not a true crime story; the characters are fiction and it feels that the idea of putting the author as the main character would be different enough to sell more books. Here’s an idea - write the next book from Daniel Hawthorne’s pov. That might be interesting. As you say Mr H, we want to know more about Hawthorne. One last thing - garden borders are not ‘neatly cut’.

Good story but not really "locked room"