ALC Review: Hawthorne and Horowitz #6

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz

Read by Rory Kinnear

Publication Date: April 28, 2026

Summary from Netgalley:

They’re making a major feature film of the first Hawthorne/Horowitz mystery novel. Except—they’re behind schedule, they’ve run out of money and . . . oh! The star has just been murdered.

Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne is dead.

Or, rather, the actor playing him in the film adaptation of The Word is Murder is. Rising star David Caine has been stabbed, and it seems that everyone on the set had a motive.

Caine had just fired his PA. He had fallen out with his director, slept with the screenwriter, humiliated his co-star and dropped his agent days before he was about to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to appear in the next Spider-Man movie.

But what if Caine’s murderer had made a mistake? What if it was the real Hawthorne who was the intended victim? For it turns out that the brilliant detective may have got it wrong ten years earlier. An innocent man has died in jail. And perhaps someone has decided that Hawthorne must pay the price.

From the film set on the south coast of England, the story moves to Reeth, in Yorkshire, the village where Hawthorne grew up. A burned-down school, a car accident that isn’t what it seems, blackmail and murder in an Elizabethan country house . . . somehow they combine to unlock the secret of what has happened in Hastings.

For once, the local police are helpful. DS Sarah Milnes gives Hawthorne carte blanche to investigate and there may even be a hint of romance in the air. Which leaves his hapless sidekick, Horowitz, on his own, stumbling his way to the truth.

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, A Deadly Episode is an intriguing page-turner that once again demonstrates why Anthony Horowitz is the reigning king of the modern whodunit.

ALC provided by Harperaudio via Netgalley for an honest review.

Confession:

I have enjoyed every single one of the books in this series, and this one was just as fun as the others. I really enjoy the dynamic between Horowitz and Hawthorne and the mysteries are excellent and really hard to figure out before the big reveal.

Rory Kinnear does an excellent job with the narration of the story. I really enjoyed listening to him and he did a wonderful job depicting both Hawthorne and Horowitz. He also did a lovely job with accents and different voices for all of the other characters as well. He really brought all of the various characters to life for me.

For those of you not familiar with the series, the author has made himself a character in the story. He is sort of like Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock. He chronicles the mysteries while also trying to puzzle out who Hawthorne is and his past. They have a very interesting relationship that is both adversarial and friendly. Hawthorne is still his brilliant yet curmudgeonly self, and still looks down upon Anthony’s contributions to the case, but he is beginning to see that Anthony can have insights that he misses. Anthony is still hot on the trail of understanding Hawthorne’s past and how it shaped him, and we do get more insight into that as well.

The mystery itself is very well done. There are a lot of suspects, all with plausible reasons to want to kill David Cane. The twists and turns in the plot are well done and even when you think you have it figured out, Hawthorne points out how wrong you are. It was brilliant and a lot of fun. The story is fast paced and really keeps you on the edge as you follow this detective duo around the English countryside.

You can certainly read this one as a stand alone, but I highly recommend that you start at the beginning, especially as the first book is the one that is being turned into a film in this story. You will also miss out on the development of Hawthorne and Horowitz’s relationship. If you enjoy a murder mystery that is set in contemporary times, but has a golden age of mystery feel to it, then this is a series you want to take a chance on.