Anthony Horowitz
Anthony John Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense. His works for children and young adult readers include the Alex Rider series featuring a 14-year-old British boy who spies for MI6, The Power of Five series, and The Diamond Brothers series.
Horowitz's works for adults include: the play Mindgame ; two Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty ; three novels featuring his own detectives Atticus Pünd and Susan Ryeland, Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders, and Marble Hall Murders ; five novels featuring a fictionalised version of himself as a companion and chronicler to private investigator Daniel Hawthorne: The Word Is Murder, The Sentence Is Death, A Line to Kill, The Twist of a Knife, and Close to Death.
The estate of James Bond creator Ian Fleming chose Horowitz to write Bond novels utilising unpublished material by Fleming, starting with Trigger Mortis in 2015, followed by Forever and a Day in 2018, and a third and final novel With a Mind to Kill in May 2022.
Horowitz has also written for television, contributing scripts to ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot and adapting six early episodes of Midsomer Murders from the novels of Caroline Graham, including the first three episodes. He was the creator and writer of the ITV series Foyle's War, Collision and Injustice, and the BBC series Crime Traveller and New Blood.
Early life
Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, into a Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper middle class lifestyle. As a child, Horowitz used to go to Instow, where his nanny took him boating on the River Torridge.Horowitz attended Orley Farm School. He started writing at the age of eight or nine and he instantly knew he would be a professional writer. This was because he was an underachiever in school and was not physically fit, and found his escape in books and telling stories. In a 2006 interview, Horowitz stated "I was quite certain, from my earliest memory, that I would be a professional writer and nothing but."
At age 13 he went to Rugby School, a public school, in Rugby, Warwickshire. He graduated from the University of York with a lower second class degree in English literature and art history in 1977, where he was in Vanbrugh College.
Horowitz's mother introduced him to Frankenstein and Dracula. She gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. Horowitz said in an interview that it reminds him to get to the end of each story since he will soon look like the skull.
Horowitz's father was associated with some of the politicians in the "circle" of prime minister Harold Wilson, including Eric Miller. Facing bankruptcy, he moved his assets into Swiss numbered bank accounts. He died from cancer when Horowitz was 22, and the family was never able to track down the missing money despite years of trying. This left the family bankrupt, requiring the sale of the large family home.
Literary career
Early literary work (1979–1991)
Horowitz's first book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower, was a humorous adventure for children that was published in 1979 and later reissued as Enter Frederick K Bower in 1985. In 1981 his second novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet was published and he moved to Paris to write his third book.In 1983, the first novel in the Pentagram series was released. Entitled The Devil's Door-Bell, the story saw thirteen-year-old Martin Hopkins trying to adjust to a new life with a foster mother on a Yorkshire farm, but it quickly becomes a nightmare when he ends up having to battle an ancient evil that threatens the whole world. Only three of the four remaining novels in the series were ever released: The Night of the Scorpion, The Silver Citadel and Day of the Dragon.
In 1985, he released Myths and Legends, a collection of retold tales from around the world. He was also involved in writing scripts for the cult 1980s television series Robin of Sherwood and a novelisation, The Hooded Man.
In 1988, Groosham Grange was published. Its central character is a thirteen-year-old "witch", David Eliot, gifted as the seventh son of a seventh son. This book went on to win the 1989 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award. Some similarities have been noted between this book and J. K. Rowling's later Harry Potter series, but Horowitz did not choose to take action because of this.
The most important release of Horowitz's early career was The Falcon's Malteser. This book was the first in the successful Diamond Brothers series, and was followed in 1987 by Public Enemy Number Two, and by South by South East in 1991.
Early children's fiction success (1992–1999)
Horowitz wrote many stand-alone novels in the 1990s. His 1994 novel Granny, a comedy thriller about an evil grandmother, was Horowitz's first book in three years, and it was the first of three books for an audience similar to that of Groosham Grange. The second of these was The Switch, a body swap story, first published in 1996. The third was 1997's The Devil and His Boy, which is set in the Elizabethan era and explores the rumour of Elizabeth I's secret son.In 1999, The Unholy Grail was published as a sequel to Groosham Grange. It was later renamed Return to Groosham Grange in 2003, possibly to help young readers understand the connection between the two books. In 2021, Horowitz revealed to a fan on Twitter that he had plans to write a third book, but was dissuaded after the success of the Harry Potter series. In the same year, Horowitz published a collection of several short horror stories aimed for children and young adults, entitled Horowitz Horror. This was an opportunity for Horowitz to further explore a darker side of his writing.
Horowitz attempted to reach out to an adult audience with a novel called Poisoned Pen. The novel is based around Martin Holland, who is a childhood friend of a 21st century incarnation of William Shakespeare. In the novel, William Shakespeare is reimagined as a Hollywood screenwriter who is murdered in a set of circumstances that Martin Holland finds rather odd, despite attempts from a Los Angeles detective to dissuade him. The novel follows Martin's attempts to solve the ever-growing mystery through a series of rather unusual circumstances and a number of people who seem rather glad that Shakespeare was murdered. The novel has never been published in the UK or even in English, but copies in Spanish and Dutch have been released. As of June 2021, despite Horowitz's recent successes in adult literature, there are no plans to get the novel republished.
Mainstream children's fiction success (2000–2010)
Horowitz began his most famous and successful series in the new millennium with the Alex Rider novels. These books are about a 14-year-old boy becoming a spy, a member of the British Secret Service branch MI6. As of 2024, there are eleven books where Alex Rider is the protagonist, and another connected to the Alex Rider series: Stormbreaker, Point Blanc, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, Scorpia ''Ark Angel, Snakehead, Crocodile Tears, Scorpia Rising, plus Russian Roulette. Horowitz had stated that Scorpia Rising was to be the last book in the Alex Rider series prior to writing Russian Roulette about the life of Yassen Gregorovich, but he has returned to the series with Never Say Die, secret weapon, Nightshade and Nightshade Revenge.In 2003, Horowitz also wrote three novellas featuring the Diamond Brothers: The Blurred Man, The French Confection and I Know What You Did Last Wednesday, which were republished together as Three of Diamonds in 2004. The author information page in early editions of Scorpia and the introduction to Three of Diamonds claimed that Horowitz had travelled to Australia to research a new Diamond Brothers book, entitled Radius of the Lost Shark. This claim was further backed up when a new Diamond Brothers novella entitled The Greek who Stole Christmas! was released in 2007, where it is hinted at the end that Radius of the Lost Shark may turn out to be the eighth entry in the series. However, the next novel in the series was instead called Where Seagulls Dare, and is unrelated to the Australian-based adventure that was previously announced. Horowitz published the first six chapters unedited on his website throughout 2020, and the full, edited novel was published in 2022, with all profits going to support the NHS.
Horowitz also published two sequels to his short horror story collection; More Horowitz Horror and More Bloody Horowitz. Many of the stories in Horowitz Horror and More Horowitz Horror were later repackaged in twos or threes as the Pocket Horowitz series, while More Bloody Horowitz was later reissued as Scared to Death. One of the short stories in More Bloody Horowitz is notable for serving as Horowitz's opportunity to get even with fellow author Darren O'Shaughnessy, more commonly known as Darren Shan. In 2008, the pair had gotten into a joke dispute over O'Shaughnessy's use of Horowitz's name for an objectionable character in Wolf Island. In retaliation, Horowitz chose to plot a gruesome literary revenge in the short story The Man Who Killed Darren Shan.
In 2004, Horowitz again attempted to branch out to an adult audience with The Killing Joke, a comedy about a man who tries to track a joke to its source with disastrous consequences. The book was not very successful, and in August 2005, Horowitz returned to young adult fiction by releasing a book called Raven's Gate which began a second successful series entitled The Power of Five. Based heavily on one of his earlier novels entitled The Devil's Door-Bell, each of the first four entries of The Power of Five subsequently ended up being a rewritten and expanded version of their respective counterpart from the Pentagram series. The second book in the series, Evil Star ,'' was released in April 2006. The third in the series is called Nightrise, and was released on 2 April 2007. The fourth book Necropolis was released in October 2008. The fifth and final book, the only one not based on an earlier Pentagram novel, was released in October 2012 and is called Oblivion. Horowitz describes this series as "Alex Rider with devils and witches".
In October 2008, Horowitz's play Mindgame opened Off Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City. Mindgame starred Keith Carradine, Lee Godart, and Kathleen McNenny. The production was the New York stage directorial debut for Ken Russell.
In March 2009 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.