So, I love Horowitz's adult novels and the Hawthorne series has been fantastic - superb writing, entertaining, always keeping you guesssing and on the page.

The last novel was different, because AH became the murder suspect, so I thought it would be back to the same formula as before - oh no! That would be too easy.

In this novel, AH writes in the third person, about a historical case, where Hawthorne has a different sidekick, and a lot cleverer that AH (sorry). Hawthorne has little interaction with AH, but.....sorry, that would be a plot spoiler.

Excellent book - hard to put down, fun to read and even more dark/sinister goings on than before - not just the plot, but....

Very highly recommended - you could treat it as a standalone, but you'd lose the enjoyment of the previous Hawthorne books. I genuinely can't wait until the next one, which frustratingly must be a year away - shame

I confess, I didn't get on with the first Hawthorne & Horowitz book but so many book-friends love this series and I like Magpie Murders so I thought I'd give it another try, albeit by jumping straight to book 5 - and this time we clicked!

Maybe because Horowitz is sidelined so there's far less opportunity for him to insert all his name-dropping and derail the murder investigation for his literary/TV woes; maybe because that results in most of the investigation being in 3rd person based as it is on Horowitz writing up the story from Hawthorne's notes and recordings; maybe because it gave Hawthorne the chance to shine with a different side-kick - by playing down the exact element (Horowitz!) that didn't work for me in the first of the series, this book suddenly sprang to life.

With a handful of great characters, a crazy murder in a posh Richmond close followed by a version of the 'locked room' mystery, this does a fantastic job of bringing the Agatha Christie-esque mystery to contemporary London. There are lots of little nudges to Christie aficionados, not least a whole bookshop dedicated to Golden Age crime. And there's almost a replay of one of Christie's most famous plots - I gasped in delighted excitement that Horowitz might go there!

In the end, this does show up the artificiality of the genre (and I couldn't help wondering how Christie makes her books so convincing - at least while we're reading them!) but I was all in for the ride.

Classy switch-off entertainment.

Many thanks to Random House, Cornerstone for an ARC via NetGalley