62 pages • 2 hours read
Anthony HorowitzThe Word is Murder
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Relationship Between Fiction and Life
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide.
This theme permeates the text due to the metafictional element: Anthony struggles with boundaries throughout the work, as the Hawthorne project challenges his writing and authorial identity as well as his overall sense of his own agency and value in the world. This is paralleled by the nature of the Cowper investigation, due to the importance of theater and performance in the victims’ lives and also that of the killer. Anthony, at first, tries to maintain the boundary between fiction and reality. He tells Hawthorne, “I like to know what I’m writing about. Creating the crimes and the clues and all the rest of it is half the fun” (20). He doubts his choice, however, intrigued by the prospect and instinctively wary of losing a possible income source. This is brought to a head during the literary festival, where the woman he doesn’t yet know is Hawthorne’s wife plays on his doubts. She says, “I’m sure you do use true stories, but what I’m trying to say is, the crimes aren’t real” (24). Anthony himself later admits to this distinction, finding things in Diana Cowper’s home that are noticeably poignant but that he cannot categorize, as he does not yet know her killer’s identity or motive.
Anthony is stunned by the discovery of Damian’s corpse, as this is far beyond his experience. His obsession with the Godwin tragedy reveals his preference for emotion over empiricism, as he remains focused on the episode until Hawthorne proves there is no link there. In his final moment of danger, menaced by Robert Cornwallis, he says, “I’m just a writer, I’ve got nothing to do with this” (251), but fiction is no protection from the threat. He does, in the same scene, compare his appreciation for Hawthorne to that of other secondary characters for the lead detective, finally accepting their partnership via the allusion.
Both Horowitz as author and Anthony the character make note of the importance of performance and art. Anthony’s daily life, of course, is permeated with fiction, his writing process, and doubts about his future work. Allusions to performance dominate the investigation, placed there by Horowitz in both his roles: Anthony notes that Diana’s home is a shrine to her son’s success, and he makes note of times when both Grace and Damian seem to be playing parts that may conceal their motives.
Diana chose a quote from Hamlet to memorialize her beloved husband, and Grace unknowingly reveals the killer’s identity with her story about Dan Roberts being replaced in the lead role. Confronted with the killer, Anthony himself notes that the placid undertaker was a performance to hide the vengeful man beneath, “nothing more than a mask,” and that it “concealed something quite monstruous which was now showing through” (244). Hawthorne’s successful rescue brings Anthony back to his familiar element. He can focus entirely on art now that he is no longer in real-life peril.
Dysfunction and Deception
In The Word is Murder, deception, malice, and distrust dominate the investigation, both in terms of what is uncovered and in how Hawthorne and Anthony respond to events and to each other. Hawthorne objects to Anthony’s early draft because it leaves out details, commenting, “[Y]ou say that Mrs. Cowper only used public transport but you never explain why” (30) and noting that he also omits the details of her funeral program. Hawthorne’s proposed solution is that Anthony omit all narrative flourish, as if the very idea of writing that does anything other than convey empirical fact may be morally suspect. These omissions, strikingly, are common in the mystery genre, especially in the 20th century, as writers frequently left evidence for the reader knowing the detective would place it into context later.
Hawthorne’s distaste for this is thus consistent with his dislike of fiction more generally. Fittingly, Hawthorne has an uncanny ability to notice deception in others: He forces Diana’s housecleaner to confess to taking money from her home, knowing before he even asks that her initial interview is a lie. He is especially disgusted with Alan Godwin’s collusion with Mary O’Brien to conceal their affair and their role in the accident that destroyed the family. He tells Godwin that maintaining the ruse of Diana Cowper’s culpability is a “cancer,” adding, “It’s eating you up” (217).
Anthony the character, in contrast, takes some key interviews at face value: He crafts an early portrait of Cornwallis as an innocent family man, calling him “perfectly pleasant” (52). He discovers, at risk to his own life, that trickery is key to the motive for both murders: Cornwallis murders Diana as a means to enact revenge on Damian. Her murder, though it is the impetus for the investigation, obscures the real motive. Indeed, Diana herself telegraphs her own desire to die by suicide, but her clues are so subtle that only Hawthorne unearths them. Damian used his former girlfriend to ensure that Dan Roberts, his rival, would lose the part of Hamlet and be consigned to the lesser role of Laertes. Horowitz as author telegraphs this to the reader with the frequent allusions to Hamlet, culminating in the portrait from the RADA production in which Anthony finally recognizes a younger Cornwallis. Anthony’s own deception, however brief, comes when he decides to meet Cornwallis alone, without consulting or informing Hawthorne. He is saved only by his partner’s investigative skills. The work’s cliffhanger, however, underscores that hidden motives have undergirded the entire enterprise: Hawthorne’s estranged wife is responsible for Anthony’s decision to work on the book, but Anthony only discovers this by accident, which imperils their partnership and drives him to quit the project. Whether their relationship will resume on a more authentic footing is left for future installments of the series.
The Challenges of Collaboration
The central relationship in the novel is the emerging and uneasy partnership between Hawthorne and Anthony. Though he loves detective fiction—recalling the joy of writing an estate-authorized entry in the world of Holmes and Watson—Anthony dreads working with the real-life detective. When he realizes it is Hawthorne trying to reach him, he recalls that only Hawthorne ever calls him “Tony” and that their past work together was often difficult. Hawthorne had declared, “It’ll be fun,” to which Anthony appends, for the reader, “But it never was” (15). Anthony initially refuses to consider Hawthorne’s project. Even after he reconsiders, he soon becomes frustrated by Hawthorne’s extreme reluctance to provide him with any details. He tries to tell him, “They’re not called criminal stories. They’re called detective stories” (45), but Hawthorne soon refuses to participate in the conversation.
Anthony comes to regret learning more about Hawthorne in the aftermath of their interview with Raymond Clunes, a theater producer and friend of Diana’s. Hawthorne posits that Clunes helped Diana escape culpability in the Godwin tragedy by having another gay man, the judge in the case, sway a verdict in her favor. He shocks Anthony by saying, “I think they’re a load of pervs” (69). In the aftermath, Anthony reflects that Hawthorne’s investigative skills are a compelling narrative, but concludes, “The trouble was, I didn’t like him very much and that made the book almost impossible to write” (71). Anthony decides that his duty will be to present Hawthorne as he is, taking an adversarial stance himself as needed. This makes their partnership more adversarial from both sides, not just due to Hawthorne’s innate irascibility. When Anthony objects to Hawthorne’s anti-gay approach to Judge Nigel Weston, Hawthorne fires back, claiming that he is only working with Anthony because other writers “turned [him] down” (195). Hawthorne, wounded, shows contempt for the skill ins which Anthony takes the most pride.
This rift turns out to have consequences for both protagonists’ character development as well as for the mystery plot. Hawthorne later tells Anthony it is his fault when Weston is the victim of an arson attack, after which Anthony strikes out on his own, investigating at RADA and then arranging the interview with Robert Cornwallis. The confrontation nearly kills him, but Hawthorne’s arrival prompts him to declare a newfound “love” for his investigative partner (253).
In Anthony’s hospital room, when Hawthorne patiently explains the case and his reasoning process, the two almost reach a level of harmony, as Hawthorne admits, “I was worried about you” (265). Anthony hopes for a fruitful collaboration, buoyed by his visit to Hawthorne’s apartment, until he realizes Hawthorne’s former wife is the reason he took the project on. The partnership, then, began under false pretenses, leading Anthony to reject it. The ambiguous ending has particular resonance, as the reader is left uncertain whether the two will manage to reunite, though the fact of the book’s existence serves as its own kind of clue.
Related Titles
By Anthony Horowitz
