Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide.

The work’s author and one of its characters, Horowitz is a well-known British author and screenwriter. His Alex Rider series about a teenage spy has sold over 19 million copies. He created the popular mystery series Midsomer Murders, adapting most of the early episodes from works by Caroline Graham, and created and wrote Foyle’s War, a well-received series for ITV about crime on Britain’s home front during World War II. He has written two Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty, as well as Magpie Murders, adapted into a television production. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2014.

In The Word Is Murder, which takes place in 2011, Horowitz is both author of the Hawthorne & Horowitz series and its protagonist. Hawthorne finds him at loose ends, having recently completed The House of Silk and uncertain about the fate of Foyle’s War, which had just concluded its wartime story arc. Anthony is well read and devoted to literature, television, and film, frequently making literary allusions to other detective novels during his time with Hawthorne. Anthony the character is sometimes insecure and easily persuadable: He finds it difficult to turn down Hawthorne’s offer of writing a book together, for all his doubts, because “one of the hardest things to do is turn down work” (20).