One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper - the wealthy mother of a famous actor - enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service. Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who's as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes....

"Anthony Horowitz tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books, he's ending their collaboration. His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open in London's West End. The play is panned by critics -- Sunday Times critic Harriet Throsby is particularly savage, especially about the writing. The next day she is stabbed in the heart by an ornamental dagger-- one belonging to Anthony, and with his fingerprints all over it. When...