When an obnoxious resident of the ritzy Riverside Close neighbourhood is murdered, law enforcement officials are left baffled. The remaining residents of the luxury community immediately close ranks as they all had motive to kill the unlikable Giles Kenworthy.
Suspects include Richmond GP Dr Tom Beresford and his wife, jewellery designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, a famous name in Agatha Christie books.
Five years later, writer Anthony Horowitz is getting desperate. He has written four crime novels with Hawthorne, mostly by following the detective and chronicling his work. Now though, Horowitz has a looming publishing deadline for their next book, but the pair haven’t solved a case in months. He then asks Hawthorne to revisit the already-solved Kenworthy case for a ready-made mystery.
This thriller, however, is structured very differently than the previous works. Rather than having the fictional Horowitz follow Hawthorne’s sleuthing in real time, the pair are reviewing a long-closed case. Still, Horowitz is in the dark for much of the novel, trying to make sense of Hawthorne’s brief recaps and terse explanations. Horowitz is also deeply curious and suspicious about Dudley, Hawthorne’s previous assistant. Why did the pair stop working together? Did it have something to do with the Kenworthy murder? Readers will enjoy following Horowitz as he works to unravel the many mysteries that surround this particular case.
To say more would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted in the story.