The Word Is Murder (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery)

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Examples of deadly weapons and instruments include but are not limited to guns, knives, deadly toxins or chemicals or gases and even vehicles when intentionally used to harm one or more victims. I did say above Horowitz doesn’t get too metaphysical about the whole thing, but in the end I think it would have been a waste of potential to completely do away with any and all meta elements.

Anthony Horowitz isn’t afraid to change up the classic mystery, and “The Word Is Murder” is no exception. Anthony finds it difficult to visit crime scenes and determine what is important, as he is accustomed to fictional worlds of his own design. This reflects the likelihood that if the victim dies, other factors will have contributed to the cause of death, breaking the chain of causation; and also means that the responsible person does not have a charge of murder "hanging over their head indefinitely". The doctors think Frank is in a persistent vegetative state, and only Alice, the compassionate and intuitive nurse, realises that he is suffering from “ locked-in” syndrome – as he himself tells the reader, “trapped in my body, like a straightjacket”.Capital punishment opponents frequently counter that the United States has much higher murder rates than Canada and most European Union countries, although all those countries have abolished the death penalty.

Horowitz has skillfully created a near-seamless blend of the his own creation and recognizable television shows and novels. Such an interactive narrator is helpful at times in the mystery, as Horowitz gives vague clues that hint at the novel’s twist. Parker argues that seven motives that explain homicides are anger, concealment, jealousy, revenge, love and gain. As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz—a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories—suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery. In the United States, in most states and in federal jurisdiction, a killing by a police officer is excluded from prosecution if the officer reasonably believes they are being threatened with deadly force by the victim.For example, Dan White used this defense [56] to obtain a manslaughter conviction, instead of murder, in the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, and responsible for creating and writing some of the UK's most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. In a narrative that follows an ex-police detective who has been hired to investigate a tough case, Horowitz supposedly bases this novel on a real case, instead of one created by his imagination. The -d- first attested in Middle English mordre, mourdre, murder, murdre could have been influenced by Old French murdre, itself derived from the Germanic noun via Frankish *murþra (compare Old High German murdreo, murdiro), though the same sound development can be seen with burden (from burthen).

In many common law countries, provocation is a partial defense to a charge of murder which acts by converting what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter (this is voluntary manslaughter, which is more severe than involuntary manslaughter).But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes that he’s at the center of a story he can’t control, and his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own. What neither of them know is that they are about to embark on a dark and dangerous journey whether the twists and turns are as unexpected as they are bloody.