AUTHOR OF THE MONTH - ANTHONY HOROWITZ
A lost inheritance, absent parents, a wicked grandmother, a wretched school life; these could all pertain to an Anthony Horowitz teen hero but in fact describe Horowitz’s own unhappy childhood. He has made a career out of coupling his own experiences with an active if macabre imagination. Anthony Horowitz is an established, successful author who is now on the brink of mega-stardom.
Horowitz is a former writer for an advertising agency who must now qualify as the hardest working author writing today. A workaholic wordsmith, Horowitz writes as comfortably and ably for TV, stage and film as he does books for children. He can write for 10 hours a day in his garden shed, from where he has created at least 20 children’s books as well as his Television work. For TV he created the series Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War, and Murder in Mind and in addition has been a regular writer on Poirot.
‘Ark Angel’, the sixth book in his series featuring reluctant teen super-spy Alex Rider, won the Best Children’s Book at the National Book Awards last month. With appropriate synchronicity the first in the same series ‘Stormbreaker’ is released as a summer blockbuster movie starring Ewan McGregor and Sophie Okonedo. Expect teenage boys to be quipping “the name’s Rider …. Alex Rider” all summer long. Horowitz writes action packed, danger-laden dramas, liberally laced with humour. The film will echo the tone with Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry and Robbie Coltrane adding British wit to the cast.
Murder and mayhem are constant themes in all his work, perhaps an adult exorcism of a child’s unhappiness. His latest children’s book, published this month, is his darkest yet. ‘Evil Star’ is a supernatural chiller following on from last year’s hit ‘Raven’s Gate’. These two are the start of another series ‘The Power of Five’ in which Horowitz pits his troubled teen protagonist against supernatural evil bent on global destruction.
Horowitz had earlier success with his Diamond Brothers and Groosham Grange books, the latter based on his own gruesome schooling. But it is the Alex Rider series that has catapulted him to the top of the class and on to the film set in Hollywood. Not content with these achievements he has just published the paperback of his first novel for adults.
‘The Killing Joke’ has the same blend of horror and humour, darkness and light as his work for children. Published on April 1st The Killing Joke follows the misadventures of Guy, the shambolic, hapless hero on his quest to find the source of jokes. A journey on which he encounters surreal and dangerous characters who have walked out of punch lines and into his life.
Anthony Horowitz has often pitted his fictional teen heroes against enemies set on global domination only to discover that in reality it is he, Horowitz, who has the world at his feet. Anthony Horowitz has mined his own childhood misery to bring enjoyment to millions of today’s youngsters - the bullied schoolboy is having the last laugh.
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