<p><strong>"One of the most entertaining mysteries of the year. It’s also one of the most stimulating, as it ponders such questions as: Which is of greater interest to the reader, the crime or the detective? And: Is the pencil truly mightier than the butcher knife?” — <em>Wall Street Journal</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Magpie Murders</em> and <em>Moriarty</em>, Anthony Horowitz has yet again brilliantly reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes.</strong></p><p>A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11 a.m. on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.</p><p>Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And