The Sentence is Death

Author: Anthony Horowitz

New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz and eccentric detective Daniel Hawthorne team up once again in a new mystery, the brilliantly inventive sequel to "The Word is Murder," to delve into the murder of a prominent divorce lawyer and the death of his former friend just one day prior.

Richard Price, a renowned divorce lawyer and recipient of an OBE for his literary works, is brutally murdered, his head smashed with a £2,000 bottle of wine, and the mysterious number 182 written on the wall beside him. Detective Daniel Hawthorne is called in to investigate, bringing with him Anthony Horowitz himself, who is reluctantly drawn into Hawthorne's world to write about the case.

Looking beneath the surface of Price's pristine public image, layers of deceit, betrayal, and revenge begin to emerge. As they trace the threads of events through literary circles and the secrets of Price's past, the problem arises that the evidence leads into a labyrinth of lies.

24 hours before Price's murder, a financial manager is found dead under the wheels of a train; he was an old friend of the lawyer, both survivors of a cave exploration accident years ago in which a third friend drowned, leading Horowitz to wonder: Was this one murder, or two?

When the killer's identity is revealed in an unforgettable, tense climax, the reader is left stunned; not only by the cleverness of the solution, but also by the realization that the dead are not the only ones who hide secrets.