It’s murder on the leafy streets of Richmond. And bestselling author Anthony Horowitz is the man to blame. Deana Luchia catches him early...
When I meet Anthony Horowitz in a quiet Richmond café to discuss his new murder mystery, it’s easy to imagine his book’s suspects sitting at the next table, having a coffee and working on their alibis.
Richmond, in fact, has a starring role in Close to Death. The murder takes place in a quiet gated community off Petersham Road. Characters walk by The Petersham Hotel to take in views of the Thames, trip down the stairs at Richmond station, and discuss clues over a pint at the Fox and Duck.
“I moved here recently, and I always use places that I know or where I’ve lived,” explains Anthony. “But with this book, I think Richmond actually inspired the idea."
“I walk my dog a lot along the river and through Richmond, and I came upon a development of houses near the German School, down River Lane, and became fascinated by the metal gate that protects the houses behind it. I thought it was the perfect setting for a murder story.”
Close to Death, the fifth instalment in the hugely popular Hawthorne series of books, is set specifically in the fictional Riverside Close. The residents’ idyllic lives are abruptly disturbed when the loud and obnoxiously provocative Giles Kenworthy moves in.
When Giles is found murdered in his hallway, and the culprit can only be one of the neighbours, private investigator Daniel Hawthorne is tasked with discovering which one held the biggest grudge. It’s a brilliant, fast-paced read as we search for clues to the killer’s identity.
“Murder is a wonderful way to examine communities and characters,” reflects Anthony. “It immediately tears down the net curtains and throws open the doors because it allows you to ask questions about the people involved.”
The author of over 50 books, including two Sherlock Holmes volumes (The House of Silk and Moriarty) and three James Bond novels (Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill), Anthony also created and wrote the TV series Foyle’s War, was one of the early screenwriters on Midsomer Murders and wrote several episodes of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot.
He is, however, best known for the Alex Rider series of children’s books, which have sold over 20 million copies and been made into a hit TV series featuring the teenage spy. Did he have any idea how successful these books would be?
“As soon as I wrote the first sentence of the first book, ‘When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it’s never good news,’ I knew I had created something different. It was my 10th or 11th book in all, and the first ten had done reasonably well, but I knew that this one was special.”
Did he write them for his own children?
“No, although they read every single one. They were very fierce critics. They told me exactly what they thought.
“But no, they were written for me. For the child I had been. I wasn’t a happy child and I went to a horrible school. The Alex Rider books were created to cheer up that child.”
We talk for a while about Charles Spencer’s recent memoir, A Very Private School, a deep dive into the almost ritual cruelties of life at a boys’ preparatory boarding school in the 1970s. It is, says Anthony, “well written and a difficult read”; an uncomfortable testament to how one’s schooldays can cause misery that lasts long into adulthood.
For the young Anthony, it was telling stories that provided an escape from the beatings and brutality of Orley Farm prep school in Harrow. Now, decades later, he still feels the irresistible pull of the pen.
“I always have at least one book on the boil,” he says. “The trouble is I find it almost impossible to stop. Writing defines my life and not to be doing it would be sort of not living. I’d become depressed very quickly because writing buttresses me against life. It’s my safe space.”
It is only 9.30 am when we meet in the cafe, but Anthony has already been working, writing scenes for his next book – the third in the Susan Ryeland series of murder mysteries. The first two, Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, have been adapted (by Anthony) into a TV series starring Lesley Manville as literary editor and amateur sleuth Susan. The idea for the third book – to be published early next year – came to him on one of those habitual walks around South-West London.
“When I’m thinking of a beginning for a book, the most important thing for me is the milieu,” he says. “Close to Death is about neighbours and you could say that Magpie Murders is about the world of publishing. I remember walking my dog in Richmond Park and Old Deer Park and along the river to Teddington Lock. Every day I was out there walking, turning over idea after idea. I vividly recall that I was walking down towards Barnes and was just past Kew Gardens when suddenly it hit me what this third book was going to be about.”
The Susan Ryeland books are ingeniously planned novels that feature murder stories embedded within murder stories. Does Anthony spend more time plotting this series than writing it?
“I do indeed,” he confirms. “When I wrote Magpie Murders, it took about four years to work it all out. But the thing is they’re meant to be super easy to read. It doesn’t matter how complicated the workings are. It’s like a watch. If you open it up and look inside, there are all sorts of coils and springs and diamonds and so on, but you can tell the time in one second.
“My books are like that. I like to call them armchair mysteries – mysteries you can solve from an armchair – where all the clues are laid out for you. They’re about human nature and observing how people behave. There’s no forensic science, no need to have an understanding of computers or police procedures. Poirot famously solved Five Little Pigs without leaving his room.”
Unusually, the Hawthorne series features Anthony as a fictional version of himself, an author who has been employed to write about the cases Hawthorne investigates. A risky venture, I suggest, for writers to put themselves in their own work.
“My publishers were quite nervous,” he admits. “They thought I might make it an ego trip or use it to promote books. But it works and is believable because Hawthorne is a private detective who isn’t earning enough money. He wants someone to write books about him and share the profits, and he chose me.
“Hawthorne is this difficult, acerbic, grumpy and brilliant man. Obviously, something has happened to him, and the writer in me is desperate to know what. But Hawthorne is very private. It’s about insecurity, the slight vanity of the writer who dislikes the fact that his books are called the Hawthorne books. At the end of the day, I’m having fun, and I hope that the books are fun to read.”
It will be a few years, however, before another Richmond Hawthorne tale.
“The books are set in the past – Close to Death was an old case of Hawthorne’s,” explains Anthony. “But by the time I get to the last book – the plan is for a series of 12 – I may well be living in Richmond.”
There is plenty to ponder, then, on those long dog walks beside the Thames.
Close to Death, by Anthony Horowitz, is published in hardback by Century (£22)
