November 27, 2025: Thoughts on 'Close to Death' Part 2 (Contains Spoilers)

I have finished listening to Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne and Horowitz series, 'Close to Death,' on Audible, so here are my thoughts.
This review contains major spoilers.
If you do not like spoilers, it is better not to read this.
Furthermore, it is quite long, so I decided to split it into two parts, upper and lower, at roughly the halfway point.
This is the second part of my review.

I wonder who would want to read a layman's rambling thoughts!! But when I write, it inevitably gets long...
Because I love this series (Hawthorne and Horowitz)...
So, it contains spoilers and is long.

If you don't like that, you should stop reading.

A list of characters I made for myself

Thoughts Part 1

Now, for the rest of my thoughts.

Thoughts on 'Close to Death' Part 2 (Contains Spoilers)

My own attempt at guessing the culprit (from the end of Part 7 onwards)

At the end of Part 7, I finally arrived at the thought: 'Could the culprit be XX?'
The points that bothered me regarding that character's depiction are as follows:
・Isn't the harassment they received a bit too light compared to the others?
・A scene that reminds me of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'.
・The fact that Andrew Pennington conveniently overheard them going to and from Roderick's house. That conversation could have been a recording.

This character is someone who reeks of emotional abuse.
My emotional abuse sensor is reacting.
Come to think of it, wasn't there one person whose whereabouts became unknown?
In the first place, the neighborhood dispute that drove this story might not be the motive for the murder.
Neighborhood disputes happen everywhere, but it is quite rare for a murder to occur because of one...
In fact, Hawthorne says as much in the story.
Even if it did happen, it would likely be due to the culprit's mental illness-induced delusions, and it shouldn't be a case where someone with a clear head devises a complicated trick.
It would probably be something like stabbing with a knife or beating someone to death.
If that's the case, there might be a bigger reason, a motive that makes the culprit feel they have no choice but to commit murder.
In other words, perhaps they committed a crime in the past and it's about to be exposed...
Come to think of it, the magnolia tree visible from the Roderick house was scheduled to be cut down for the pool construction project.
The dog, Ellery, must have been wandering around that magnolia tree...
Could that be...?

Regarding the ending

After listening to the very end, I thought, 'So that's how it is.'
This is not about the mystery or the culprit, but my thoughts on the work itself.
To confirm that, I listened to the final chapter one more time.
Perhaps this work was also a story about 'the pride of a man named Hawthorne'.
I wanted to say, 'Hawthorne, I didn't doubt you, unlike Horowitz!'
Or rather, Horowitz is walking on thin ice again this time.
When I think about it, that scene was dangerous; I feel like it wouldn't be surprising if he were killed.
He just happened to be lucky this time and nothing happened, but Horowitz, you should really stop your habit of charging into places you're curious about...

Also,
I laughed at the fact that there wasn't much difference between Horowitz's deductions and my own.
As expected, it seems Horowitz's deductive ability in the story is set to be the same as the reader's.

The fact that the aftermath of the characters I'm curious about isn't clear, or is left vague, felt like 'reality' and was deeply satisfying.
Where did those two go, and where did that person go?

And,
Because I like Hawthorne,
I have reached a point where I am misled by the place name 'Reeves'.
When I hear Reeves, I think of Hawthorne!!

On the other hand, I have some guesses about Hawthorne's past, and I've started to feel like I don't really want to know it.
Because that would likely be a very painful story.

More than that, I want to read more about 'Hawthorne's pride as a human being' and his emotions.
In the story, Hawthorne said something like, 'The people of River Close have formed an omertà.' I wondered why he went out of his way to say that line... but Hawthorne was also keeping an omertà with someone.
Horowitz tries to dig up the past, but I wonder if he has the resolve to remain Hawthorne's partner, or the spirit to keep an omertà...
I'm a little suspicious.
Please don't make Hawthorne look any sadder, Horowitz!!

I'm definitely curious about the next volume

I feel like I read somewhere that the Hawthorne series is planned to be about 10 volumes.
Since this book is the 5th volume,
the next volume will be the start of the second half of the series.
The publisher, the readers, and above all, Horowitz himself, know this.
He surely won't make it a half-baked mystery...
This time it was a locked-room murder.
Next time, maybe breaking an alibi,
or a serial murder,
I wonder if he will tackle one of the classics of the mystery genre.
I wonder what he will do next...
I am impressed that he never runs out of ideas.
On top of that, Horowitz also writes the Susan Ryeland series,
has written 007,
and writes (or wrote?) scripts for movies and dramas, so
it's phenomenal.
No wonder his books sell enough for him to move to Richmond, I think.
I definitely want to see the Hawthorne and Horowitz series through to the end.