It might be wise to read the two prior books in this series because Horowitz, as himself, needs a bit more introduction than is here.  Besides, he mentions these prior cases. 

A Line to Kill 
by Anthony Horowitz 
2021 / (384 pages)
Read by Rory Kinnear 8h 50m
Rating: A / crime who-done-it 

The conceit is of the series is that Horowitz is a writer of children’s books now studying a brilliant but mysterious detective named Daniel Hawthorne so as to write True Crime books. He’s already written two which have apparently been moderately successful.

Horowitz is to introduce Hawthorne to his publishers.  There they finalize a plan for Horowitz and Hawthorne to go to a festival where Horowitz’s upcoming book as well as his most recent prior, The Sentence is Death, will be hyped.  The festival at hand is held at Alderney Island in the Channel Islands.  

There are many characters and I would have gotten seriously confused had I not made notes. I think it made reading more fun, too, because I was following everything more closely. Here are the main characters:

Horowitz checks out the other writers at the festival: 
* Mark Bellamy – (Tea-Leaf)an old school style cooking writer –  jokester chubby- unhealthy 
* Elizabeth Lovell –  a blind woman who sees into the spirit world wrote two autobiographies – popular
* George Elkin – Alderney’s most famous historical author – Channel Islands – bird watcher and artist
* Ann Cleary –  children’s adventure books – “books behind bars” organizer – works with schools – her son was killed from drugs and suicide. 
* Myesa Lamarr – French – performance poet – in a rural dialect – 

There are a few other characters but those are the main ones. This is a true who-done-it so they aren’t much more than Agatha Christie characters.

One of the characters is killed fairly early on and Horowitz and Hawthorne are on hand to solve the mystery. I suspect there will be another book in this series – I look forward to it.