In Conversation: On A Line to Kill: A Novel

Anthony Horowitz, OBE, is the author of the bestselling Magpie Murders, The Word is Murder, and Trigger Mortis, which features original material from Ian Fleming. He is also the author of the bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults, and the creator of the wildly popular Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle’s War on PBS. In A Line to Kill: A Novel (Harper), the third installment of the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series, former Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival. An idyllic remote island off the south coast of England, Alderney is the last place they’d expect to find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation – or trapped with a cold-blooded killer in an isolated place colored by a murky, haunted past. At Alderney, the two meet the festival’s other guests, an eccentric bunch, along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line. Then a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, and Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it’s clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. A Line to Kill is a riddle of a story, full of delicious satire, brilliant misdirection, and diabolically clever denouements.

Otto Penzler is the editor of 16 Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, The Big Book of Jack the Ripper, The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, The Big Book of Female Detectives, The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime Films, and, most recently, The Big Book of Espionage. He lives in New York City, where he is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop.