The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

Harper, 384 pages, $27.99

Daniel Hawthorne is a former Scotland Yard detective. He was “released” under dishonorable circumstances. It is in his incarnation as a private investigator that he meets Anthony Horowitz (fictional). Yes, Anthony Horowitz (fictional) is a character in his (real-life) own book. He is Hawthorne’s “Watson.” That makes Hawthorne, of course, “Holmes.” There is nothing like being a character in one’s own book to obfuscate the actual relationships, strengths, weaknesses, and silliness of the author’s real character, one would say. Clever, disingenuous, and entertaining.

“Tony,” Hawthorne’s nickname for Horowitz — and loathed by him — is still the writer of television’s “Foyle’s War,” “Midsomer Murders,” and other actual projects of the prototype Horowitz. One of the fictional characters in “The Sentence is Death” loves Horowitz’s actual book series, the Alex Rider books. A fictional author in the book remembers meeting Horowitz at a book fair and not liking him much then, or now. How much fourth wall demolition is there? Horowitz’s readers are both his confidantes and also the readers of the second publication of the adventures of Daniel Hawthorne, a publication that Hawthorne and the characters left alive at the end of the book presumably will read. Quite a bit of flash and tomfoolery are the result.

Horowitz, the fictional version, is reluctantly called upon to bear witness to Hawthorne’s greatness, without getting to muck about in his tantalizingly mysterious personal life. Hawthorne wants the money that Horowitz’s writing can provide. Horowitz is prey to his own curiosity and he soon forgets his strident resolution to never become involved with the arrogant, manipulative, sociopathic investigator again (after “The Word Is Murder”). Thus begins “The Sentence is Death.”

Richard Pryce, a divorce lawyer, has been bashed over the head with a £2000 bottle of wine and lacerated with the resulting shards. Who hated him (or the wine) that much? Could it be his current client, a successful businessman with interests he perhaps didn’t want revealed; the client’s abrasive wife, the so-called author who puzzlingly dislikes Horowitz; his husband who may have been having a slap-and-tickle on the side;  someone involved with a caving incident that took place years ago. The suspects, in the best British detective fashion, are numerous.

Although the Hawthorne-Horowitz by-play is enormously entertaining, the plot is everything. Horowitz gathers all the clues and gradually comes to his own conclusion. Aha! Horowitz has finally bested Hawthorne. Will future books star only Horowitz? Will it fall to Horowitz alone to battle the odious Scotland Yard detective, DI Cara Grunshaw, and her equally odious assistant, young what’s-his-name (actually named Darren, but who cares?), in future episodes?

There’s a lot of wink-winking going on with the real-life Horowitz writing about the fictional Horowitz, but underlying the murder story are some sad glimpses at human frailty and its consequences. Horowitz balances it all and creates a page-turning book as well.

Logically, will the next book be entitled, “The Paragraph Is ...”? The paragraph is too long? The paragraph is buried? The paragraph is erased? His final paragraph?