Close To Death by Anthony Horowitz

In a quiet neighbourhood in Richmond (London), everyone knows everyone and lives in peace. Until the Kenworthys move in and become everybody’s nightmare - loud music at night, ruined flowerbeds, cars blocked in… Every single person in the close is sick of them. And it’s no surprise when Giles Kenworthy, a husband and a father, ends up dead in his own house. But who killed him? They are all potential suspects as there isn’t a person in the close that didn’t have an issue with this family.

Let’s be honest, I wasn’t the biggest fan. I did enjoy the writing as well as the story but it’s the ending that left me feeling very underwhelmed. I found there was too much meddling with the plot twist to a point that it didn’t feel like a plot twist, and I wasn’t as surprised as I was hoping to be. I did enjoy the analytic mind of Daniel Hathworne and the way he explained all his findings. I also found the idea of a book within a book really gripping, it felt like it added another layer to the story and simply made it more interesting. However, the ending felt a bit forced and unlikely to happen and, like I mentioned, too chaotic.

Let’s start with the characters. There was quite a lot of them and I found a little difficult to follow who was who (maybe it was just me, I don’t know). We are introduced to tenants of a different home in each of the first chapters but I feel like I didn’t get enough exposure to them to memorise them. However, they were all presented to me with a reason to hate Kenworthys which was a nice touch of building the tension. I would have liked a little more characters with more backstory and character development as they did feel a bit shallow at times but I do understand where the author was coming from when he presented the reader with a whole list of potential suspects. To be completely honest, I wasn’t a fan of Daniel Hawthorne, I found him pompous and egotistic and while he was extremely smart, I didn’t like the way he treated either John Dudley, who was there to help, or the author of the book to which he was a central character. I’d like to say I did like John Dudlet but again, it feels like he didn’t get enough page time.

My favourite part about this book was the ‘book within a book’ trope. The chapters written from the author’s POV where a nice break between the story and added depth. However, I did find some of them a little forced, especially towards the end and I feel like they could’ve been executed better.

The author picked the right narrative to tell the story. Or should I rather say narratives? The mixture of the third-person POV for chapters telling the story of the case, and the first-person POV in the chapters written by the author himself, worked really well. It gave us an insight into the author’s head but at the same time kept a healthy distance when reading about the case. It gave the book a good overview of the story and made it somehow fuller.

About the plot itself… well, it had its positives and negatives. The way Giles Kenworthy died was believable however, I don’t think the actual sequence of events was. Without spoiling too much, I understand the idea of a mastermind planning the whole thing ahead but it seemed a bit far-fetched. Personally, I don’t think anyone can plan ahead in so much detail but maybe it’s just me. I found it very unlikely. It was impressive that Hawthorne managed to solve the case but again, it seemed unlikely to piece everything together without actually having too much evidence, which brings me to my next point: a lot of ‘evidence’ was just his gut, not physical evidence. It was still fun to see what he came up with, though.

Overall, it’s a nice and easy read but I’d prefer it to be substance, less speculation.

Rating: 3/5