Passion, deception, an unexplained death and a detective with quite a lot to hide lie at the heart of Anthony Horowitz's brilliant murder mystery, the second in the bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne.

Though both Akira and Adrian seem equally contemptible, Adrian is continuously cast in a decent light while Akira is painted as intolerable, which seems to be motivated by the fact that Adrian is a man and Akira is a woman.

Inspector Lestrade: DI Cara Grunshaw, the detective in charge of the case, is thuggish and extremely belligerent and is very angry that Hawthorne has been invited in to consult.

The atmosphere is that of a traditional mystery novel with clues being presented to the reader (through the narrator) at every opportunity. The first book amazed me with it's ingenuity - managing to combine the real author and the book's fictional detective, with Anthony Horowitz playing the role of narrator in a fictional story.He was dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow tie, clothes that might have been deliberately chosen to say nothing about him. Dies Wide Open: Anthony is bothered by the "staring eyes" of Richard Pryce when looking at the crime scene photos. Horowitz’s unfortunate portrayals do distract from the overall story, which is a shame because in and of itself the core mystery of “The Sentence is Death” is truly entertaining.