Close to Death

Tom Beresford, another resident of the Close, hears Giles come home and can’t get back to sleep. He goes downstairs and finds the whiskey bottle and glass from his nightcap but makes coffee instead. He thinks about the neighborhood meeting that night to discuss the issues that have arisen since the Kenworthys moved in.

Tom’s problem with Giles is that he owns four cars and parks them in the shared driveway, often blocking Tom’s car. When Tom confronts Giles, the other man insists that he is overreacting. Tom is a doctor and takes it very seriously when he can’t get to his office on time, but lack of respect and breach of common neighborhood etiquette angers him most. He is looking forward to the meeting that night.

Riverview Close’s history goes back to King George II, but the development is fairly recent. Six houses share a gated drive: The Stables (Adam and Teri Strauss), Gardener’s Cottage (Tom and Gemma Beresford), Woodlands (Roderick and Felicity Browne), The Gables (May Winslow and Phyllis Moore), Well House (Andrew Pennington), and the largest, Riverview Lodge (Giles and Lynda Kenworthy). The neighborhood is small, and upon entering it, it feels as though one is in a quieter past time. Everyone had always gotten along well until the Kenworthys moved in.

Andrew remembers the chaos of the Kenworthys moving in. The first thing they did was cut down two trees for a patio extension, and they have continued in the same vein since. Andrew is a former criminal defense lawyer and likes to give the benefit of the doubt. However, when he’d gone to welcome them to the neighborhood, Giles assumed that he was a deliveryman and then didn’t ask Andrew in. Andrew knows that Giles is racist—other interactions since that first have only reaffirmed it. After they met, Giles put a flyer for the UK Independence Party in his window and flew the Union Jack. As a Black man, Andrew has been dealing with people like Giles all his life. Andrew was the one who suggested the meeting that night, and he’s looking forward to it.

The morning of the meeting, May Winslow and Phyllis Moore eat breakfast. They are widows and were the first to buy into Riverview Close 14 years earlier. They live in The Gables, the smallest and least expensive house, between Well House and Woodlands. The women, both in their eighties, are so alike that they are often mistaken for sisters, and they have a French bulldog named Ellery. At first, Adam Strauss and his first wife, Wendy, lived in Riverview Lodge; however, after their divorce, Adam married Teri, and they moved into The Stables. At one time, Adam was a wealthy celebrity with a television show about chess, but his finances changed. Other things have changed in the neighborhood as well: Iris, Andrew’s wife, got cancer and died, and Felicity Browne became chronically ill and confined to her bed.

Now, May and Phyllis discuss Giles’s loud late-night arrival. May slept through it, but Phyllis heard him. Lynda Kenworthy knocks on their door, and when May answers, Lynda hands her a plastic bag filled with Ellery’s poop. She complains that their dog has been in her yard again and tells May that if Ellery’s behavior doesn’t stop, she will tell Giles to “deal with it” (36).

After Lynda leaves, May and Phyllis go to the tea and bookshop they own, The Tea Cosy. Although the shop specializes in mystery novels, they refuse to carry anything violent, gory, or graphic, preferring to only carry classic mysteries.

Roderick Browne stands next to his open window, listening to May and Lynda talk. Although he has come to know May and Phyllis over the years, he knows very little about them except that they were nuns before May inherited money and bought The Gables.

Roderick is a dentist. He gets ready to go to work. His and Felicity’s lives have changed since Felicity was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)—they gave up all their hobbies like tennis, golf, and archery. The main symptom of ME is chronic fatigue, and Felicity is mostly bedridden. Her senses are very sensitive, and she spends her days in their bedroom, which overlooks Riverview Lodge’s garden.

Before he leaves, Roderick reminds Felicity about the neighborhood meeting that night, although he assumes that she won’t be able to attend. As he is leaving, Felicity’s caregiver, Damien, arrives. He gives Roderick their mail, and among the envelopes is a local council notice that the Kenworthys have requested permission to build a swimming pool. Roderick is shocked—installing a swimming pool would mean cutting down the magnolia tree in the Kenworthys’ garden, and the pool would ruin Felicity’s view. In addition, the noise and chemicals would be impossible for Felicity. Roderick looks forward to confronting Giles at the meeting that night, thinking that “it [i]s a fight to the death and it [i]s starting now” (47).

That night, Andrew, Tom, Gemma, May, Phyllis, and Roderick meet at Adam and Teri’s house. Felicity makes the effort to attend as well. She decides that it is important to attend, and they are all surprised to see her. As they wait for Giles and Lynda to arrive, Adam shows Andrew his collectible chess sets. His favorite one includes the characters from Lord of the Rings, given to him by “the ruler of Dubai” (50).

As the night continues, they begin to doubt whether Giles and Lynda will show up. Tom is angry and pours himself another drink. Gemma tries to stop him—she worries about Tom’s “drinking, the secret smoking, [and] the anger that she c[an] see welling up inside him” (54). Everyone else begins to get angry too, which peaks when Adam gets a text message from Giles saying that he and Lynda won’t be coming. Adam tells them that he feels responsible for the trouble with the Kenworthys, as he’s the one who sold Riverview Lodge to them. They talk about retribution, but Andrew advises against it. He also believes that legal action is out of the question—if they tried it, the Kenworthys have the money to outlast them. He suggests that they write protesting letters to the local council, and the meeting breaks up soon afterward.

Six weeks later, someone will be dead, and they will all agree that Giles really should’ve come to the meeting.

The author, Anthony Horowitz, speaks directly to the reader. He explains why this book is different from the previous four books in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series: He and Daniel Hawthorne haven’t consulted with the police in months, and Horowitz has a deadline for the next book. His agent suggested that he write about one of Hawthorne’s old cases.

Horowitz decided to go ahead with this idea. Unlike before, where he followed Hawthorne around as he solved a murder, Horowitz would have access to all the case information from the beginning, including who the killer is. He would only need to consult with Hawthorne and do some research to fill in the details. He remembers Hawthorne mentioning a murder that happened in Richmond, on the edge of London, and calls the detective.

Horowitz and Hawthorne meet at a coffee bar. Horowitz is very curious about Hawthorne’s private life, including his model building, but there’s a lot he doesn’t know. Hawthorne is married and has a son but doesn’t appear to live with them. His apartment is bland and anonymous, acquired through his brother Roland, who, like Hawthorne, works for a “shadowy” security firm headed by a Mr. Morton. Each of these details only adds to the mystery.

They rarely meet at Horowitz’s flat—his wife, television producer Jill Green, doesn’t approve of Hawthorne or the writing project and has asked not to be a part of the novels. Hawthorne is a smoker, so they always meet somewhere where they can sit outside. As Horowitz looks at the detective, he thinks that the man looks like he belongs in a black-and-white movie.

Horowitz brings up the Riverview Close case, and Hawthorne says that he doesn’t like how the case turned out. When Horowitz presses him, Hawthorn admits that the victim, Giles Kenworthy, was shot with a crossbow—the man had been “some sort of hedge fund manager. Old Etonian. Right-wing, borderline racist” (80), and had been killed in a neighborhood dispute.

Horowitz asks whether Hawthorne kept notes and is shocked when Hawthorne tells him that his assistant did. Horowitz didn’t know that Hawthorne had partnered with anyone before him—Hawthorne tells him that John Dudley wasn’t a writer but a “professional” and that they lost touch after the case.

Hawthorne agrees to give Horowitz the case notes but insists that he will have to be part of the writing process. Horowitz resists at first but realizes that Hawthorne is right—he will be writing about past events and people he’s never met. He’ll have to write it in third person instead of his usual first-person point of view. They decide that he will give Hawthorne a few chapters at a time to fact check. Hawthorne also tells Horowitz that he is withholding the killer’s identity because Horowitz’s writing is better when he doesn’t know: “That’s what makes your writing so special. You don’t have a clue” (84). Although Horowitz is momentarily offended, he sets his feelings aside.

Hawthorne fills Horowitz in on the case—it involves a private neighborhood known as Riverview Close. Hawthorne introduces the pertinent characters—the only person he doesn’t want to talk about is Dudley. Horowitz theorizes that their parting was “acrimonious.”

At this point, Horowitz reminds the reader that Part 1 was written after he received the case notes from Hawthorne and is based in fact. However, he reminds the reader that just as with the other novels in the series, he is ignorant of future plot twists and the eventual solution. He was pleased with how Part 1 turned out, but when he gives it to Hawthorne, the detective points out all the embellishments that Horowitz added and the important clues he left out.

Hawthorne points out, for example, that Horowitz added other sports equipment to Roderick’s garage in addition to the crossbow. Horowitz defends himself by explaining the principle of “Chekov’s gun.” If he’d only shown the crossbow, a knowledgeable reader would immediately guess that it was the murder weapon. They also decide that there should be a map of the neighborhood at the beginning of the novel. Horowitz asks why Hawthorne was called in to investigate, and Hawthorne tells him that Khan called him in because it was a “sticker.”