English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children’s novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels for the ITV series. He is the creator and writer of the ITV series Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders and Collision.
Anthony Horowitz’s first book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower, was a humorous adventure for children, published in 1979 and later reissued as Enter Frederick K Bower. In 1981 his second novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet was published and he moved to Paris to write his third book. In 1983 the first of the Pentagram series, The Devil’s Door-Bell, was released. This story saw Martin Hopkins battling an ancient evil that threatened the whole world. Only three of four remaining stories in the series were ever written: The Night of the Scorpion (1984), The Silver Citadel (1986) and Day of the Dragon (1986).
In between writing these novels, Horowitz turned his attention to legendary characters, working with Richard Carpenter on the Robin of Sherwood television series, writing five episodes of the third season. He also novelized three of Carpenter’s episodes as a children’s book under the title Robin Sherwood: The Hooded Man (1986). In addition, he created Crossbow (1987), a half-hour action adventure series loosely based on William Tell.
In 1988, Groosham Grange was published. This book went on to win the 1989 Lancashire Children’s Book of the Year Award. It was partially based on the years Horowitz spent at boarding school. Its central character is a thirteen-year-old “witch”, David Eliot, gifted as the seventh son of a seventh son. Like Horowitz’s, Eliot’s childhood is unhappy. The Groosham Grange books are aimed at a slightly younger audience than Horowitz’s previous books.
This era in Horowitz’s career also saw Adventurer (1987) and Starting Out (1990) published. However, the most major release of Horowitz’s early career was The Falcon’s Malteser (1986). This book was the first in the successful Diamond Brothers series, and was filmed for television in 1989 as Just Ask for Diamond, with an all star cast that included Bill Paterson, Jimmy Nail, Roy Kinnear, Susannah York, Michael Robbins and Patricia Hodge, and featured Colin Dale and Dursley McLinden as Nick and Tim Diamond. It was followed in 1987 with Public Enemy Number Two, and by South by South East in 1991 followed by The French Confection, I Know What You Did Last Wednesday, The Blurred Man and most recently The Greek Who Stole Christmas. Horowitz also released Myths and Legends, a collection of retold tales from around the world, in 1991.
Horowitz wrote many stand-alone novels in the 1990s. 1994′s Granny, a comedy thriller about an evil grandmother, was Horowitz’s first book in three years, and it was the first of three books for an audience similar to that of Groosham Grange. The second of these was The Switch, a body swap story, first published in 1996. The third was 1997′s The Devil and His Boy, which is set in the Elizabethan era and explores the rumour of Elizabeth I’s secret son.
In 1999, The Unholy Grail was published as a sequel to Groosham Grange. The Unholy Grail was renamed as Return to Groosham Grange in 2003, possibly to help readers understand the connection between the books. Horowitz Horror (1999) and More Horowitz Horror (2000) saw Horowitz exploring a darker side of his writing. Each book contains several short horror stories. Many of these stories were repackaged in twos or threes as the Pocket Horowitz series.
Horowitz began his most famous and successful series in the new millennium with the Alex Rider novels. These books are about a 14-year-old boy becoming a spy. He is a member of MI6. Currently, there are nine Alex Rider books: Stormbreaker (2000), Point Blanc (2001), Skeleton Key (2002), Eagle Strike (2003), Scorpia (2004) Ark Angel (2005) , Snakehead (2007) , Crocodile Tears (2009) and Scorpia Rising (2011). The seventh Alex Rider novel, Snakehead, was released on 31 October 2007, and the eighth, Crocodile Tears, was released in the UK on 12 November 2009. The final Alex Rider book, Scorpia Rising, was released on 31 March 2011. It is uncertain when Yassen, the book detailing the adventures of assassin Yassen Gregorovitch, Alex Rider’s old nemesis, will be released, if at all.
In 2003 Horowitz also wrote three novels featuring the Diamond Brothers: The Blurred Man, The French Confection and I Know What You Did Last Wednesday, which were republished together as Three of Diamonds in 2004. The author information page in early editions of Scorpia and the introduction to Three of Diamonds claimed that Horowitz had travelled to Australia to research a new Diamond Brothers book, entitled Radius of the Lost Shark. However, this book has not been mentioned since, so it is doubtful it is still planned. A new Diamond Brothers “short” book entitled The Greek who Stole Christmas was later released. It is hinted at the end of The Greek who Stole Christmas that Radius of the Lost Shark may turn out to be the eighth book in the series.
In 2004 Horowitz branched out to an adult audience with The Killing Joke, a comedy about a man who tries to track a joke to its source with disastrous consequences. Horowitz’s second adult novel, The Magpie Murders, was due out on 18 October 2006. However, that date passed with no further news on the book; all that is known about it is that it will be about “a whodunit writer who is murdered while he’s writing his latest whodunit” and “it has an ending which I hope will come as a very nasty surprise”. As the initial release date was not met, it is not currently known if or when The Magpie Murders will be released.
In August 2005, Horowitz released a book called Raven’s Gate which began another series entitled The Power of Five (The Gatekeepers in the United States). He describes it as “Alex Rider with witches and devils”. The second book in the series, Evil Star, was released in April 2006. The third in the series is called Nightrise, and was released on 2 April 2007. The fourth book Necropolis was released in October 2008.
In October 2008, Anthony Horowitz’s play Mindgame opened Off Broadway at the Soho Playhouse in New York City. Mindgame starred Keith Carradine, Lee Godart, and Kathleen McNenny. The production was the New York stage directorial debut for Ken Russell. Recently he got into a joke dispute with Darren Shan over the author using a character that had a similar name and a description that fitted his. Although Horowitz considered suing, he decided not to.
In March 2009 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.
On 19 January 2011, he was announced by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to be the official writer for a new Sherlock Holmes book, to be published by Orion Books. Sherlock Holmes and The House of Silk, will be released in November 2011.
Horowitz began writing for television in the 1980s, contributing to the children’s anthology series Dramarama, and also writing for the popular fantasy series Robin of Sherwood. His association with murder mysteries began with the adaptation of several Hercule Poirot stories for ITV’s popular Agatha Christie’s Poirot series during the 1990s.
Often his work has a comic edge, such as with the comic murder anthology Murder Most Horrid (BBC Two, 1991) and the comedy-drama The Last Englishman (1995), starring Jim Broadbent. From 1997, he wrote the majority of the episodes in the early series of Midsomer Murders. In 2001, he created a drama anthology series of his own for the BBC, Murder in Mind, an occasional series which deals with a different set of characters and a different murder every one-hour episode.
He is also less-favourably known for the creation of two short-lived and sometimes derided science-fiction shows, Crime Traveller (1997) for BBC One and The Vanishing Man (pilot 1996, series 1998) for ITV.
He devised the 2009 ITV crime drama Collision and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael A. Walker.
Horowitz is the writer of a feature film screenplay, The Gathering, which was released in 2002 and starred Christina Ricci. He wrote the screenplay for Alex Rider’s first major motion picture, Stormbreaker.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 on 6 April 2011, Horowitz announced that he was writing the sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. The sequel will be based on the Tintin graphic album Prisoners of the Sun and directed by Peter Jackson.
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