Anthony Horowitz

The celebrated writer tells us more about the latest release from his Hawthorne and Horowitz series

- With MATT NIXSON

Arriving an hour late to interview Anthony Horowitz and expecting (and deserving) a telling-off, I'm delighted to find him poised with a writing pad completing a chapter outline and three pages of his novel.

“I can work anywhere in the world with this,” he gestures to his smart fountain pen containing, he tells me with a mischievous smile, a blend of ink known as “Writer's Blood”.

It couldn't be more fitting for Horowitz who, should he cut himself shaving, would surely bleed ink. First drafts are written in longhand before he transfers them on to a laptop, he tells me. “Sitting with this wonderful tool and paper, and to have ink on my fingers, makes me happy,” he continues.

Having just turned 70, fans will be delighted to hear the ideas “just keep pouring in’. Indeed, over 47 years and more than 60 books, he’s moved with grace between projects; one minute tuning in a TV script (like last year’s Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue); the next an Alex Rider adventure for younger readers; James Bond and Sherlock Holmes reboots; or one of his two current adult murder-mystery strands ~ Susan Ryeland and Hawthorne and Horowitz.

The latter features PI Daniel Hawthorne and his hapless sidekick — a fictional alter ego of himself - and the sixth book, A Deadly Episode, was published yesterday.

The series has been getting increasingly humorous, its creator growing in confidence in his metafiction elements, and the latest sees a feature film made of the first book in the series, The Word is Murder.

“The production company is fairly hopeless, the director is pretentious, they've run out of money and they're over budget,’ says Anthony.