The House Of Silk

hour, Holmes? Let’s go back to the fire and enjoy a whisky peg together. Any business you may have can surely wait until the day.’
    ‘Watson, you are the very best of friends and I am aware that I have been poor company. What I need is a little time alone. But we will have breakfast tomorrow and I am sure you will find me in better spirits.’
    We did and he was. We spent a pleasant and companionable day visiting the British Museum and lunching at Simpson’s, and it was only as we were returning home that I saw in the newspapers a report of the great fire on Hamworth Hill. A building that had once been occupied by a charitable school had been razed to the ground, and apparently the flames had leapt so high into the night sky that they had been visible as far afield as Wembley. I said nothing about it to Holmes and asked no questions. Nor had I remarked that morning that his coat, which had been hanging in its usual place, had carried about it the strong smell of cinders. That evening, Holmes played his Stradivarius for the first time in a while. I listened with pleasure to the soaring tune as we sat together on either side of the hearth.
    I hear it still. As I lay down my pen and take to my bed, I am aware of the bow being drawn across the bridge and the music rises into the night sky. It is far away and barely audible but – there it is! A pizzicato. Then a tremolo. The style is unmistakable. It is Sherlock Holmes who is playing. It must be. I hope with all my heart that he is playing for me …
Anthony Horowitz on Writing The House of Silk: Conception, Inspiration and The Ten Rules.

    I’m still quite surprised that I was approached to write
The House of Silk
(I’m assuming, by the way, that you have read it before you reach this point. Spoilers follow!). Although the bulk of my television work is adult, when it comes to fiction I’m better known for children’s books – in particular the Alex Rider series – and I’m fairly sure that the Doyle estate wasn’t interested in a fast-paced action thriller full of explosions and improbable chases. They’d already had plenty of that with Robert Downey Jnr. At the time, they weren’t even aware that I have long been an admirer of the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories. I was actually given a set by my father for my seventeenth birthday (I think) and they immediately wove themselves into the fabric of my life. I cannot now read
The Dying Detective
or
The Devil’s Foot
(two of my favourites) without somehow regressing into my teens. For me, Jeremy Brett was the finest TV Holmes and watching occasional re-runs on ITV3, I find myself being taken back to my late twenties and can see the house where I lived, even the clothes I was wearing. There are very few characters in fiction who have the power to do this – but Holmes is certainly one of them.
    It may well be that Sherlock Holmes is the reason why I have spent so much of my life writing crime fiction of my own and if there is one small boast that I occasionally make, it’s that I have probably written more fictional murders than any other writer. Ever. The crime figures can be quickly totted up.
    I helped to create
Midsomer Murders
from the novels of Caroline Grahame (‘Agatha Christie on acid’) and they certainly have the highest body count on British Television. I wrote the first seven episodes which saw no fewer than nineteen fatalities including Elizabeth Spriggs (poisoned), Anna Massey (pushed out of a window) and Orlando Bloom (stabbed with a pitchfork). In the early days of
MM
, writers were encouraged to develop a bad habit in that whenever an advertising break approached, someone would be killed simply to make the story more interesting and to encourage the audience to keep watching. It could be argued that in the end this would turn the series into a parody of itself. For my part, I had to give up writing the show when I realised that there was hardly anybody left in Midsomer to murder.
    Before
MM
, I adapted fourteen hours of Agatha Christie’s
Poirot
, which averaged at least one murder in the short stories, often two or three in the novels. A less successful original series of mine,
Crime Traveller
, had a detective travelling back in time to prevent murders and invariably feeling (it was a time paradox … if there hadn’t been a murder he would never have travelled back in time so the very fact that he had done so proved that it had to have happened). Eight hours, eight more