A short life of the author
Anthony Horowitz (b. 1955) was born on 5 April 1955 in Stanmore, Middlesex, England. He studied English and art history at the University of York. He began writing for television in his early twenties and has written extensively for the screen, including Midsomer Murders, Poirot, and Foyle’s War (which he created).
Life and Career
Stormbreaker (2000) — about Alex Rider, a fourteen-year-old boy recruited by MI6 after his uncle’s death — launched a YA spy series that has sold over 25 million copies and been compared to a junior James Bond. The series spans thirteen novels.
The Conan Doyle Estate authorised Horowitz to write two Sherlock Holmes novels: The House of Silk (2011) and Moriarty (2014). The Ian Fleming Estate commissioned two Bond novels: Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018).
The Hawthorne and Horowitz series — The Word Is Murder (2017), The Sentence Is Death (2018), A Line to Kill (2021), The Twist of a Knife (2022), Close to Death (2024) — is his most inventive creation: detective novels in which Horowitz himself is a character, assisting the detective Daniel Hawthorne while writing about the cases.
Magpie Murders (2016) — a novel within a novel, in which an editor reading a Golden Age-style mystery discovers that its author has been murdered — was widely praised and adapted as a BritBox series (2022). Moonflower Murders (2020) is its sequel.
Major Works and Themes
Horowitz writes about the mechanics of storytelling — mystery, detection, and the relationship between author and narrative. His fiction celebrates the pleasures of genre while playing with its conventions.
Key Works
- Stormbreaker (2000)
- Magpie Murders (2016)
- The Word Is Murder (2017)
- The House of Silk (2011)
Collecting Horowitz
Stormbreaker (2000, Walker Books UK) brings $30–$80.
The House of Silk (2011, Orion) brings $20–$50. Horowitz signs prolifically at UK events.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Line to Kill The third Hawthorne novel — Horowitz and Hawthorne attend a literary festival on the Channel Island of Alderney where a controversial property developer is murdered, a locked-island mystery in the Agatha Christie tradition with the series' characteristic metafictional layers. | 2021 | Century | English |
| Close to Death The fifth Hawthorne novel — a hated resident of an exclusive London close is found murdered, and every one of his affluent neighbors had reason to want him dead, a suburban-noir mystery examining how proximity breeds contempt among the privileged. | 2024 | Century | English |
| Eagle Strike The fourth Alex Rider novel — Alex pursues pop-star-turned-assassin Damian Cray, whose charity work conceals a plan to hijack nuclear missiles and destroy the world's drug-producing regions, blending celebrity culture satire with espionage thriller. | 2003 | Walker Books | English |
| Forever and a Day Horowitz's second James Bond novel — a prequel to Casino Royale telling the story of how Bond earned his 007 number, investigating the death of the previous 007 on the French Riviera and uncovering a heroin-trafficking operation tied to the Corsican underworld. | 2018 | Jonathan Cape | English |
| Magpie Murders Horowitz's literary mystery masterpiece — a novel-within-a-novel in which an editor reading a whodunit manuscript discovers that its author has been murdered, with clues to the real killer hidden within the fictional detective story, adapted into a BBC/PBS series. | 2016 | Orion Books | English |
| Moonflower Murders The sequel to Magpie Murders — Susan Ryeland, now running a hotel in Crete, is asked to investigate a disappearance connected to another Atticus Pünd novel, returning to the novel-within-a-novel structure with a new pair of interlocking mysteries. | 2020 | Century | English |
| Moriarty Horowitz's second authorized Holmes novel — set immediately after Reichenbach Falls, a Pinkerton detective and a Scotland Yard inspector investigate Moriarty's American successor while Holmes's fate remains uncertain, a Victorian thriller with a devastating final twist. | 2014 | Orion Books | English |
| Point Blanc The second Alex Rider novel — Alex infiltrates an exclusive boarding school in the French Alps that is actually a front for a cloning operation, where a mad scientist replaces the children of world leaders with his own genetic duplicates. | 2001 | Walker Books | English |
| Scorpia The fifth Alex Rider novel — Alex discovers his father was also a spy and seeks the truth from SCORPIA, a criminal organization that offers to reveal his family's secrets if he will assassinate a target for them, the series' darkest entry and its most morally complex. | 2004 | Walker Books | English |
| Skeleton Key The third Alex Rider novel — Alex is loaned to the CIA and sent to a Caribbean island where a Russian general plans to detonate a nuclear bomb to destabilize world politics, the entry that expanded the series' scope from British to international espionage. | 2002 | Walker Books | English |
| Stormbreaker The first Alex Rider novel — a fourteen-year-old discovers his uncle was a spy and is recruited by MI6 to investigate a billionaire's plan to distribute free computers to British schools, a plan that conceals a devastating biological weapon, launching one of YA fiction's most successful series. | 2000 | Walker Books | English |
| The House of Silk The first authorized Sherlock Holmes novel since Conan Doyle — Horowitz was selected by the Conan Doyle Estate to write a new Holmes adventure, a mystery involving child exploitation in Victorian London that Watson describes as too scandalous to publish during his lifetime. | 2011 | Orion Books | English |
| The Sentence Is Death The second Hawthorne novel — a divorce lawyer is bludgeoned to death with a bottle of wine, and the number 182 is painted on the wall of his home, as Hawthorne and Horowitz investigate a case connecting literary London, wine connoisseurship, and marital secrets. | 2018 | Century | English |
| The Twist of a Knife The fourth Hawthorne novel — a theatre critic is stabbed to death after savaging Horowitz's new play, making the author himself the prime suspect, forcing Hawthorne to clear his Watson's name in the series' most personal and self-referential entry. | 2022 | Century | English |
| The Word Is Murder The first Hawthorne novel — Anthony Horowitz writes himself as the narrator, shadowing a brilliant but abrasive ex-detective named Daniel Hawthorne who investigates the murder of a woman who planned her own funeral six hours before she was killed, a metafictional crime series. | 2017 | Century | English |
| Trigger Mortis Horowitz's first authorized James Bond novel — set two weeks after Goldfinger, Bond races against a SMERSH operative to prevent the sabotage of a British rocket test, incorporating unpublished material from Ian Fleming's archives and capturing the Cold War Bond voice. | 2015 | Orion Books | English |