Anthony Horowitz Audiobooks

A Deadly Episode: the latest Hawthorne case, with Horowitz himself as the sidekick

1 audiobook reviewed

Who is Anthony Horowitz?

It is hard to think of another writer quite so busy in so many corners of British crime. Anthony Horowitz, born in 1955, made his name twice over: once with Alex Rider, the teenage spy series that turned a generation of reluctant readers into readers, and once on television, where he created Foyle’s War and wrote for Midsomer Murders and Poirot.

He is also the only novelist entrusted with both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond by their respective estates, producing The House of Silk and Moriarty for one, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill for the other. His Susan Ryeland novels, beginning with Magpie Murders, play elaborate games with the golden age whodunit, and the Hawthorne books push the trick further still by casting Horowitz himself as the hapless narrator trailing a real detective. He was appointed OBE for services to literature in 2014.

Anthony Horowitz in audiobooks

A Deadly Episode, the sixth Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery, arrived in 2026 with a gloriously self-referential premise: a film of The Word is Murder is shooting in Hastings when the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed on set, leaving the real Hawthorne to investigate his own murder, with half the crew in possession of a motive.

Rory Kinnear narrates, as he has for the series, and he is ideal casting: dry, exact, and very good at the needling comedy between the detective and the writer following him about. At roughly eight hours it moves quickly, and although it is a late entry in the sequence it explains itself well enough for a first-time listener to keep up. The recording is waiting below.