Rating 4⭐s
You can buy Close To Death...here You can find out about the author...here
Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.
It is the perfect idyll until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.
When Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.
Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?
I like Anthony Horrowitz as an author. He is both prolific and dependable. He never delivers anything less than about an 8 out of ten. He is my go to guy when I'm in a reading slump. In rugby when an outside half is trouble, going backwards and cornered invariably he just ships the ball out to his inside centre. A big ball carrier who dips his shoulder and drives forward to get the team back on the front foot. A good centre has good decision making skills coupled with clarity of thought and the nous of years of experience. Horrowitz is my inside centre, my literary Jamie Roberts. He is also recognised as a safe pair of hands by both the James Bond publishers and Sherlock Holmes publishers. He now writes officially sanctioned novels for both franchises. I digress, back to "Close To Murder (COM)." Once again he does not disappoint.
The beauty of the Hawthorn and Horrowitz (H&H) novels is the relationship between our mismatched protagonists. The character Horrowitz is indeed the very same as the author. Is it narcissistic to write yourself into your own book? He is very self deprecating about though, often portraying himself as a bumbling, out of his depth but essentially nice bloke. For the vast majority of the series he writes in the 1st person. Although for a large part of this novel, he writes in the third person as he is recounting a time before he met Hawthorn. Hawthorn, Played in my head by Phillip Glenister (of Life on Mars fame,) is a taciturn curmudgeon who doesn't play well with others. He does however have one magnificent redeeming feature. He is a genius at solving complex criminal cases. Horrowitz sadly lacks even the basic crime solving skills of Hawthorn, he does however possess the skills so lacking in Hawthorn. Namely those of openness, empathy and the ability to engage and communicate with others. So Hawthorn is the brains of the outfit while Horrowitz is basically the scribe recording events as they happen for later novelisation. Keen eyed bibliophiles would have spotted the obvious inspiration of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Well if it isn't broke don't fix it, update it and sell it again.
This tale, the 5th in the H&H series centres on Riverside Close, a residential area in the posh, middle class area of Richmond London. Incidentally where the author lives. (I bet his neighbours are scanning this book for possible references to them!)
So far, so peaceful until the Giles Kenworthy moves in to the area. Definitely not one of their recognised social strata. A self made hedge fund manager, right wing borderline racist who blocks peoples drives with his multiple vehicles, has numerous parties and barbecues, gets planning permission to build a pool and generally recognised as being an awful neighbour. As time goes by he gives all the neighbours a cause to hate him. Which in the end gives the police far too many suspects to handle when he is found dead at his home with a cross bow bolt protruding from his neck.. Which one of them did it or did they go full Orient Express. DCI Khan suspecting a potential political banana skin calls in Hawthorn. He is to either solve the case and give the plaudits to Khan or in the event of failure to be a scapegoat. A no lose situation for the media savvy, upwardly mobile career policeman.
Hawthorn is unleashed on the suspects and along the way, he solves a few side quests. What is up with the two elderly reclusive spinsters? why does everyone employ a gardener who is not very good at gardening? Who was John Dudley, Hawthorns previous no2 and why hasn't Hawthorn ever mentioned him? These are the starters to whet the appetite for the main course of who killed Kenworthy and why. We are fed juicy red herrings a plenty. The author is very cunning, he shows us the obvious path to a solution and another hidden trail and yet another more deeply camouflaged trace but wrapped up in these and buried deep like Vietnamese sniper in the jungle is the actual solution. I must admit he had me caught up in one of his rain forest booby traps. But when the investigation concludes it becomes embarrassingly obvious. A real fore-heading slapping "of course" moment
Wonderfully intricate and plausible plotting, with more threads than Jeffrey Epstein's contact list. It also boasts well developed and distinct characters. With so many players it was a possibility that they merge in readers head. It is teastament to the writer's skill that they do not. If she were alive today Agatha Christie would be reading Anthony Horrowitz books
“Did he think he was about to be arrested?’ Hawthorne asked. ‘He didn’t say. But the police wouldn’t have arrested him for something he hadn’t done.’ ‘I’m sure that’s never happened,’ Dudley agreed.”
“Surely that’s just semantics.’ ‘The trouble with you, Tony, is that you’re great with long words, but you never think them through. The semantics! It’s the small things that matter. That’s how criminals give themselves away.”
“But you will give me the solution!’ ‘No. I won’t.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘You never know the solution, mate. That’s what makes your writing so special. You don’t have a clue.’ Had any compliment ever been more backhanded?”
It was part of the charm of the place that it existed in the world as it had been fifty years ago, when neighbours left their doors open or their keys under the mat and burglaries were rare enough to be news.”
“Most murderers don’t really think about what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘You get the fantasists, the husbands who hate their wives, the kids who hate their stepdads, and they may think about murder for years . . . but they’re never going to do it. Planning it is enough. You know as well as I do that most murders are acts of passion – spur-of-the-moment things. One drink too many. A fight that gets out of control. But then, just now and again, you get the genius, the killer who’s not going to get caught, who sits down and works it all out. These are what you call the stickers, the crimes that are like no others because there’s an intelligence behind them. That’s where I come in. That’s sort of my speciality.”
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