The Word is Murder

Broadly defined, the mystery genre encompasses a plot dedicated to the solving of a crime—often, though not always, a murder. The crime may be solved by a member of the police, someone adjacent to the criminal investigation, or an amateur. Horowitz is clearly indebted to the traditions of the 1930s Golden Age of Detective Fiction, pioneered by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, and others, beyond his stated interest in Sherlock Holmes, one of the Victorian era’s most notable fictional detectives. In these novels, the central crime can be solved by the reader through clues and evidence left in the narrative, though the detective frequently sums up the case for an audience in the conclusion—a convention that disconcerts Hawthorne.

In his first chapter, Horowitz leaves clues he does not fully explicate. He intentionally cites and describes the quotation from Hamlet above the funeral parlor while offering no indication that the play is key to the identity of the killer (4). Throughout the work, Horowitz as author has Anthony the character record details without noting their significance or context, such as the thematic resonance of Diana Cowper’s funeral program or Robert Cornwallis’s full name seen on his Undertaker of the Year award (52).

Hawthorne’s insistence that only the murder is significant, not the identity or personal life of the detective, is, in some ways, a defense of the genre’s history: Sherlock Holmes is not altered emotionally or personally by the vast majority of his cases. The same is essentially true for his Golden Age successors Hercule Poirot, Roderick Alleyn, and Miss Marple. Anthony is familiar with Hawthorne’s traditional attitude, having written several of the scripts for Poirot television adaptations. His novels Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders also engage directly with the Golden Age mystery’s forms and tropes. Hawthorne’s monologue in the penultimate chapter, explaining his thought process and the solution to the case, is characteristic of the Golden Age novel’s structure.

Anthony’s insistence that the detective’s inner life is important to readers reflects changes in the genre later in the 20th century, where readers follow a detective and their personal lives throughout a series. This change notably emerged in the work of P. D. James, whose Adam Dalgliesh goes from a solitary life to a new relationship, and in the works of Deborah Crombie and Louise Penny, whose detectives all undergo personal and professional crises as they solve cases. Though Anthony’s quest to comprehend Hawthorne is incomplete, the reader does get significant glimpses into Anthony’s inner life, his doubts, and the sense that the Cowper investigation has changed him and his understanding of crime. This, too, is a departure from the Golden Age convention, where the less-skilled investigative partner is often a less complex character dominated by their loyalty and admiration of the detective. Anthony’s prickly relationship with Hawthorne and established skills of his own counter this trope, adding complexity to the text.