Anthony Horowitz

Who is Anthony Horowitz?

Anthony Horowitz is one of Britain’s most remarkably versatile writers — a man who has written authorised continuations of both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, created two long-running television institutions, and simultaneously built one of the cleverest ongoing mystery series of the past decade. That combination of range and quality is nearly without precedent in contemporary crime fiction.

Television audiences know Horowitz as the screenwriter behind Midsomer Murders, which he created and ran for many years, and Foyle’s War, the wartime detective drama widely regarded as among the finest British crime television ever made. He also created the young adult spy series Alex Rider, which has been adapted for television and continues to reach new generations of readers.

In prose, Horowitz has written authorised Sherlock Holmes novels — including The House of Silk and Moriarty — with the blessing of the Conan Doyle estate, and two authorised James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis and Forever and a Day. These are not pastiche; they are confident, technically accomplished additions to canonical series.

His most personal and inventive work, however, is the Hawthorne & Horowitz series. Here, Horowitz writes himself as a character — the Watson to ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne’s Holmes. Horowitz-the-character is hired to shadow Hawthorne and document his cases, creating a series that is both a genuinely puzzling mystery and a sustained meditation on the act of writing detective fiction. The meta-layer never overwhelms the plotting, which is rigorous and fair-play.

Horowitz brings to the series a lifetime of professional craft. Every book moves efficiently, respects the reader’s intelligence, and delivers a satisfying resolution. The Hawthorne character — difficult, opaque, occasionally unpleasant — is one of the more memorable creations in recent British crime writing.

Quick facts

• Born: 1955, London
• Nationality: British
• Genre: Crime fiction, mystery
• Best known for: Hawthorne & Horowitz series, Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War, Alex Rider
• TV credits: Midsomer Murders (creator), Foyle’s War (creator)
• Authorised continuations: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond
• OBE awarded for services to literature

What order should I read Anthony Horowitz’s books?

For the Hawthorne & Horowitz series, start with The Word is Murder — it introduces the unusual Horowitz-as-narrator conceit and establishes the dynamic between the two central characters. Reading in publication order matters here: Horowitz builds Hawthorne’s backstory gradually, and details seeded early pay off in later books.