Just when you thought that Anthony Horowitz’s series could not get any more meta (he appears as a character in these books), he ups the ante even further in A DEADLY EPISODE.

It’s the third week of production when former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, visit the set of the film adaptation of THE WORD IS MURDER, the first Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery. What might have been an enjoyable experience is shattered by a murder. When asked who was killed in response to the cry of a body being discovered, the illustrious director Cy Truman yells out “Hawthorne.” Of course, it is not the Hawthorne we have grown to love in these novels but rather the actor, David Caine, whose bloody corpse has been found in his trailer.

"I loved A DEADLY EPISODE from beginning to end. Here’s hoping that this is not the last we see of the partnership between Hawthorne and Horowitz in a novel written by the real Anthony Horowitz."

Hawthorne, with the able and sometimes unwilling assistance of Horowitz, immediately sets into motion to help DS Sarah Milnes with the case, which has a plethora of suspects who might have wanted the curmudgeonly and unlikable actor dead. A DEADLY EPISODE relates the backstory of how this movie came about. One of the book’s many meta moments includes the dropping of a group of A-list actors who initially were talked about for the Hawthorne role: Daniel Day-Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Andrew Scott and Jude Law. Caine got the gig because he had collaborated previously with the director.

Izzy Mays, a young worker on the set, found the body and is quickly ruled out as a suspect. At the top of the list of those under suspicion is James Aubrey, Caine’s agent who was unceremoniously fired just days earlier in a very rude text exchange. With Aubrey losing out on his meal ticket, who was getting ready to star as a villain in the next Spider-Man flick, it is quite easy to see how he could have been angry enough to have done the deed.

In a humorous moment at this point in the investigation, Hawthorne suggests that Horowitz use these events for a future novel. When he insists that he could not possibly take on another book, Hawthorne replies, “Looks like you’re already in one, Tony.” Horowitz surmises that this is the third time in recent memory that an actor died during the shooting of a movie. He cites River Phoenix and Brandon Lee, but notes that Caine is the only one of the three to have been murdered on set.

Hawthorne wavers between different suspects before coming to the realization that he may be looking at the case entirely wrong. After all, the person who was murdered was staying in a trailer that had his character name on the door. It is quite possible that the real Hawthorne was the intended target. He then recalls a murder investigation that went awry during the early part of his career. This makes him rethink everything up to that point and sets the story within a story in motion, further perplexing astute mystery readers who might have thought they had been close to figuring this one out. 

I loved A DEADLY EPISODE from beginning to end. Here’s hoping that this is not the last we see of the partnership between Hawthorne and Horowitz in a novel written by the real Anthony Horowitz.