Although I enjoyed The Word is Murder, I wasn’t really into The Sentence is Death. I doubted that I’d read the 3rd book in this series but I was intrigued by the setting of Alderney, so I decided to give it a go anyway. It doesn’t work as a standalone book, so you need to have read the previous ones.
The premise is that the author (a fictionalised Anthony Horowitz) and mysterious rogue detective Hawthorne are invited to a literature festival on Alderney in the Channel Islands. They find themselves caught up in a murder case and there are quite a lot of suspects. It’s cleverly plotted, with some rather implausible details. The best elements are the setting, the pace, the twists and the blending of real life with fiction. The ending leaves the possibility for another sequel, which I may read, just to find out the truth about Hawthorne. I’m not usually a fan of detective fiction but I make an exception for Horowitz. It’s not one of his best, in my opinion, but there’s nothing I really disliked about it. Just not my genre and perhaps the concept of him being a character in his own story is getting a little stale for me.
Thank you to the publisher Century for the advance copy via NetGalley. The book will be published in a few days’ time.
Well the good side of it is you completed the series! 🙂 No more Horowitz for you from now on then haha 😉
On the contrary,.. I still like Horowitz and I’m re-reading his books for teens, every so often 😀 I’m not sure if this series is complete or not, it is getting a stale concept for me but I’d be annoyed not to complete it, if another was written.