A Line to Kill

As well as being a fan of  his "Foyle's War" and "Midsomer Murders" TV series, I have read 5 other stand-alone mysteries from Anthony Horowitz. In several, we get to see the author himself as a character in the story; this book is the 3rd entry in the "Hawthorne and Horowitz" series, following The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. In other books, we get a complete story within a story, e.g., Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders. Beyond that, he has been a prolific writer with over a dozen books in his teen-targeted "Alex Rider" series alone.

Since I have tired of writing book summaries for now, I chose that offered by Booklist as a reasonable alternative:

"Great Agatha Christie's ghost! PI Hawthorne and novelist Horowitz (the fictional version) are trapped on an island with an eccentric group of writers. The oddly dynamic duo return for their third adventure (after The Sentence Is Death, 2019), and this time they travel together to Alderney, in the Channel Islands, for what is billed as an exclusive literary festival. Turns out, not all that exclusive. A popular blind psychic, a TV chef, an aging children's author, a somewhat tedious historian, and a suspiciously behaved (and plagiaristic) poet round out the talent, along with Horowitz and PI Hawthorne, about whom Horowitz is writing a true-crime book. They find a grim welcome from a place riddled with reminders of its WWII occupation by the Nazis, and also in turmoil over a hotly contested power line that will boost the island's economy but ruin the landscape. The man behind the development is the "uniquely offensive" Charles le Mesurier. When he turns up dead, no one is surprised. Or sorry. Horowitz is a master of misdirection, and his brilliant self-portrayal, wittily self-deprecating, carries the reader through a jolly satire on the publishing world." 

Publishers Weekly called this 3rd installment a "superior" mystery and concludes, "The often prickly relationship between the Watson-like Horowitz and the Holmes-like Hawthorne complements the intricate detective work worthy of a classic golden age whodunit. The author's fans will hope this series has a long run." And Kirkus says the book "reads like a golden-age whodunit on steroids."