THE TWIST OF A KNIFE Hawthorne and Horowitz, Book 4

Rory Kinnear delivers an engaging and well-paced performance of Anthony Horowitz's third mystery featuring PI Hawthorne and Horowitz himself as a character. The amusing, sometimes befuddling, conceit mingles a fictional plot with facts from Horowitz's actual life. This time, the murder of a critic who panned Horowitz's London play implicates the playwright. Kinnear's chesty-sounding Hawthorne is engaging, intransigent, and offhand; his accent is cleverly hard to place on the social register. His higher-pitched Horowitz is hapless and comically whiny as a disbelieving victim. Most of the action involves Hawthorne conducting interviews in order to unmask the true killer, but Kinnear doesn't let things drag and offers distinctive and droll character interpretations that maintain our interest through to the surprise conclusion. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2022]