Anthony Horowitz has written himself into The Word is Murder (2017), the first book of the detective Daniel Hawthorne series and his latest to be translated into Italian. Leaving the post of all-knowing author, who has the murder already solved, Horowitz delights in having become Hawthorne’s sidekick, “who knows nothing“.

It’s a trick to break new ground in the gargantuan murder mystery genre: “Robot detectives? Vampires? Astronauts?” It’s all been done!”. But it isn't mere novelty he’s after in this planned 12-book series. Horowitz feels closer than ever to his new detective, on and off the page. A “difficult, damaged“ man, yet one we should learn to like, the same as other “horrible men” like Conan Doyle’s Holmes. Horowitz hopes to be Hawthorne’s literary and flesh-and-bone Watson. After all, he suggests to nods from the audience, we are fond of Holmes because of the friendship between Baker Street’s famous detective and his “Dr.”.

You must be waiting for this plot to thicken, there must be more to it than characters, however illustrious. The key players for Horowitz are his readers, the clues can’t be misread. His answers to Marco Malvaldi’s sharp inquiries are genuine, straightforward, never curt, always charming. He doubles down at the end, effusively thanking the big crowd for their unwavering affection.

But it’s not about personal success, it’s the entire genre which has been killing for ages. Why do we love these books, many penned by Horowitz, so much? Horowitz is analytical, more detective than sidekick in his dissection of the genre’s popularity. “Murder mysteries are not about murder”, they’re about motives. Our collective imagination has learned to equate murder with “a secret, a fear, a hatred”, those are the real mysteries we are eager to entangle. Whenever a detective is tasked with a new case, he adds, we the readers are the detective's equal. We know what they - from Holmes to Hawthorne, from Alex Ryder to Bond - know, we want to know what they want to know.

“We live in a world where it is perhaps impossible to find out the truth”: Outside fiction, all we have is information, and we seem to be increasingly mistaking red herrings for clues. We turn to fiction, confident that all i’s will be dotted, all t’s crossed. When the detective leaves, “the mystery is solved, everyone in the community is healed, everybody is whole”.