The Word Is Murder (Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery #1)

Anthony Horowitz has yet again reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes. One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper -- the wealthy mother of a famous actor -- enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who's as quick with a…