Anthony Horowitz Takes Bad Neighbors to Murderous Levels in “Close to Death”

You’re born with relatives, you choose your friends — but your neighbors? For better or worse, they simply turn up. And chances are, you’ve had a few undesirables living next door once or twice in your life. 

In Close to Death, Anthony Horowitz’s fifth book in his groundbreaking Detective Hawthorne series, he takes the concept of bad neighbors to murderous levels when a new family moves into the idyllic gated community, Riverside Close. With their gas-guzzling vehicles and garish plans for expansion, the Kentworthys quickly offend everyone in the quaint six-house neighborhood. So when Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his doorstep via crossbow, Hawthorne has a ready-made suspect list, all of whom have motive to kill. 

“I’m actually quite surprised there aren’t more murder mysteries written in those sorts of communities,” Horowitz says, speaking to BookTrib via Zoom from his home in the UK. “Certainly in the UK, neighbor disputes can destroy lives. People literally fight to the death over a shrub or the position of a fence. Just recently in the UK, someone sued their neighbor over moving a fence six inches, and they spent so much money on lawyers, they had to sell their house. How much crazier can you get?”

A lot crazier, it turns out, as Horowitz writes in Close to Death. 

From the opening pages, it’s evident that the Kentworthy family doesn’t fit in at Riverside Close. The current occupants are an eclectic but tight-knit group — the two nuns who own a bookstore in town, a dentist who only retains celebrity clients, a Black barrister, a doctor struggling with the National Health Service, a jewelry designer, and a chess grandmaster. 

“In the world of Agatha Christie and some of the golden age crime writers I admire so much, you get your bishops and actresses. I wanted this neighborhood to be, on the one hand, somewhere anyone could live, not full of strange people, but at the same time, they had to be interesting and fun people to write about,” Horowitz says. “It took me a long time to come up with a mix that was both eclectic and believable.” 

It’s evident Horowitz had fun creating the characters — in fact, it’s actually this “f” word that drives the series. Horowitz — an accomplished screenwriter, young adult and mystery author with more than 40 novels to his credit, including 14 books in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series — wanted to turn the typical who-done-it on its head with these books, which prompted an unusual “sidekick.” Anthony himself appears in the series as the author writing about the mystery Hawthorne is trying to solve. 

It’s a literary device that allows Horowitz to poke a little fun at the industry. 

“Normally in a murder mystery, the author is the cleverest person,” he says. “And the sidekick is usually the stupidest. I think it’s so fun that in this series, the writer is so helpless. The Anthony in the books doesn’t have a good time, I’m afraid. He’s been twice in the hospital, and twice he’s given away evidence to the murderer and caused all sorts of trouble. I’m not a terribly good sidekick at all.” 

Fans would likely disagree. The banter between the two characters provides a bit of comic relief to the dark side of murder, allowing for the kind of immersive reads ripe for adaptation. Could that be on the horizon?

“There is something in the works, but I’m afraid I can’t share much about it right now,” Horowitz says. “We’ve had a really wonderful actor read the books and would like to play Hawthorne, and another actor who is interested in playing me. These are quite big names. But there’s a lot to think about.” 

In the meantime, Horowitz isn’t resting on his laurels. He has three more novels planned for the Detective Hawthorne series — which he hopes will make it to an even dozen stories by the time he’s finished — and is 100,000 words into a third book following Moonflower Murders and Magpie Murders. 

Horowitz is clearly having fun, and we’re here for it.