Reading List

Authors Like Anthony Horowitz

In Stormbreaker (2000) Anthony Horowitz sent a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, Alex Rider, to work for MI6, and the series has since run to more than a dozen books. On television he wrote the early episodes of Midsomer Murders and created Foyle’s War. Magpie Murders (2016) hides a whole 1950s village whodunit inside a modern mystery, its final chapter missing. In The Word Is Murder (2017) he cast himself as the Watson to a prickly former detective, Daniel Hawthorne, and he has written new adventures for both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. In April 2026 the sixth Hawthorne book, A Deadly Episode, took the pair to a film set in Hastings, where the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed. The ten writers below share his pleasures: a puzzle played fair, a detective and a sidekick, and an author who enjoys showing you how the trick is done.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Crime fiction · Golden Age puzzles · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Anthony Horowitz, start with Agatha Christie, whose Golden Age puzzles Magpie Murders (2016) deliberately imitates, and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes Horowitz continued in The House of Silk (2011). For a modern puzzle you solve from the paperwork, read Janice Hallett. Further down are a Japanese homage to Christie and the novelist who put himself into his own detective story long before Horowitz did.

10 authors like Anthony Horowitz

01
The detective and his Watson

Arthur Conan Doyle

Scottish · A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)

Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was an Edinburgh-trained doctor practising in Southsea when he wrote A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes and his narrator, Dr Watson, set the pattern of brilliant detective and admiring sidekick that crime fiction still uses. In later life Conan Doyle became a leading spiritualist.

The Conan Doyle estate authorised Horowitz’s The House of Silk, and the Hawthorne books rework the Holmes-and-Watson pair with Horowitz himself as Watson. Start here for the source of both.

— Lisanne

Every book by Arthur Conan Doyle →

02
The rules he plays with

Agatha Christie

British · The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), And Then There Were None (1939)

Christie was born in Torquay in 1890 and wrote 66 detective novels, most featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple; the solution of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd caused an uproar on publication. And Then There Were None was first published under a racist title that was later changed, and in 2023 several of her novels were reissued with passages revised for offensive language. She died in 1976.

Horowitz wrote for ITV’s Poirot early in his career, and the novel inside Magpie Murders is a deliberate Christie pastiche set in a 1950s village. Read Christie for the rules he bends.

— Lisanne

Every book by Agatha Christie →

03
Where Alex Rider comes from

Ian Fleming

British · Casino Royale (1953), From Russia, with Love (1957), Goldfinger (1959)

Fleming was born in London in 1908 and worked in naval intelligence during the Second World War before writing twelve James Bond novels and two collections of stories. He died in 1964. In 2023 Ian Fleming Publications reissued the novels with a number of racial references removed or reworded.

Horowitz has written three Bond novels for the Fleming estate, beginning with Trigger Mortis (2015), which uses material Fleming wrote for an unmade television series. Alex Rider is often described as a teenage Bond; this is the adult original.

— Lisanne
04
The whodunit turned inside out

Jorge Luis Borges

Argentine · Ficciones (1944), The Aleph (1949)

Borges (1899–1986) was born in Buenos Aires and became director of Argentina’s National Library in 1955, by which time he was going blind. Several stories in Ficciones, such as “Death and the Compass” and “The Garden of Forking Paths”, are detective stories that turn on a logical trap. With Adolfo Bioy Casares he also wrote comic detective stories under the joint pen name H. Bustos Domecq.

Borges asks the question Horowitz plays with: what if the detective, and the reader, are being led by the author? In “Death and the Compass” the detective’s cleverness is his trap, which complicates the comforting idea that solving the puzzle restores order.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jorge Luis Borges →

05
The author inside the case

Paul Auster

American · City of Glass (1985), The New York Trilogy (1987)

Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947 and lived for decades in Brooklyn. In City of Glass, a writer of crime novels takes a phone call meant for a detective named Paul Auster and decides to take the case himself; a writer called Paul Auster later appears as a character. He died in 2024.

Long before the Hawthorne books, Auster put a writer with his own name into his detective story. He uses the trick to unsettle rather than to entertain, so read him if the games with the narrator are what you love in Horowitz.

— Lisanne
06
Christie, in Japan

Yukito Ayatsuji

Japanese · The Decagon House Murders (1987)

Ayatsuji was born in Kyoto in 1960, and his debut, The Decagon House Murders, is credited with launching Japan’s shin honkaku movement, which revived the fair-play puzzle mystery. In it, members of a university mystery club, nicknamed after Western writers such as Agatha, Ellery and Poe, visit an island where a family was murdered. Ho-Ling Wong’s English translation appeared in 2015.

A direct homage to And Then There Were None, played as strictly fair as Horowitz plays his puzzles. It shows how the Golden Age travelled, and its solution arrives in a single, famous line.

— Lisanne
07
Clues in plain sight

Kate Atkinson

British · Case Histories (2004), Life After Life (2013), Transcription (2018)

Atkinson was born in York in 1951 and won the Whitbread Book of the Year with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995). Case Histories introduced Jackson Brodie, a former police officer turned private investigator; Transcription follows a young woman recruited by MI5 in 1940.

Atkinson shares Horowitz’s habit of hiding clues in plain sight and his feel for wartime Britain, the territory of Foyle’s War. Her crime novels are looser and sadder than his puzzles, more interested in what a crime does to the people left behind.

— Lisanne

Every book by Kate Atkinson →

08
Another teenage spy

Charlie Higson

British · SilverFin (2005), The Enemy (2009)

Higson was born in 1958 and co-created the BBC sketch show The Fast Show. Ian Fleming Publications commissioned him to write Young Bond, five novels about James Bond as a schoolboy in the 1930s, beginning with SilverFin. His later series The Enemy is a horror story in which a sickness turns adults against children.

The closest match to Alex Rider: a teenage hero, set-piece action and jokes, from another television writer trusted with Bond. A good next step for younger readers who have finished Horowitz.

— Lisanne
09
The cosy whodunit, revived

Richard Osman

British · The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Bullet That Missed (2022)

Osman was born in 1970 and is best known as the co-presenter of the BBC quiz show Pointless. In The Thursday Murder Club, four residents of a retirement village in Kent investigate a murder on their doorstep. It began a series, and Netflix released a film adaptation in 2025.

The same comic warmth and fair-play plotting, with a television writer’s sense of a cliffhanger. Osman is cosier than Horowitz and has no interest in tricks about who is telling the story.

— Lisanne

Every book by Richard Osman →

10
The mystery as a case file

Janice Hallett

British · The Appeal (2021), The Twyford Code (2022)

Hallett worked as a magazine journalist and government communications writer before her debut, The Appeal, which is told entirely in emails, text messages and documents about an amateur theatre company and a fundraising campaign that ends in murder. Two law students read the file alongside the reader.

The closest modern match to Magpie Murders: a novel that hands you the evidence and dares you to beat the detective. Like Horowitz, Hallett plays scrupulously fair.

— Lisanne

Where to start if you loved Anthony Horowitz

If you loved Magpie Murders, read Janice Hallett.

The Appeal: a murder you solve from the paperwork.

If you loved the Hawthorne books, read Paul Auster.

City of Glass: a writer named Paul Auster inside a detective novel.

If you loved Alex Rider, read Charlie Higson.

SilverFin: James Bond as a schoolboy in the 1930s.

If you want the Golden Age itself, read Agatha Christie.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: the solution that caused an uproar in 1926.

If you want more Horowitz, start with Magpie Murders.

Then try The Word Is Murder (2017), the first Hawthorne book, and read on to A Deadly Episode (2026).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Anthony Horowitz

Who writes like Anthony Horowitz?

Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Janice Hallett are the closest. Christie and Conan Doyle wrote the kinds of puzzle he pastiches, and Hallett writes modern fair-play mysteries told through documents.

What should I read after Magpie Murders?

Janice Hallett’s The Appeal (2021) for a mystery solved from documents, and Yukito Ayatsuji’s The Decagon House Murders (1987) for another homage to Christie. Horowitz’s own sequels are Moonflower Murders (2020) and Marble Hall Murders (2025).

What books are like Alex Rider?

Charlie Higson’s Young Bond series, starting with SilverFin (2005), is the closest: a teenage hero, spies and action. Ian Fleming’s own Bond novels are the adult source.

Is Richard Osman like Anthony Horowitz?

In part. Both write warm, funny, fair-play mysteries for a wide audience, but Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (2020) is cosier and has none of Horowitz’s games with the narrator.

Does Anthony Horowitz have a new book?

Yes. A Deadly Episode, the sixth Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery, was published in April 2026; on the set of a screen adaptation of The Word Is Murder, the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed. Marble Hall Murders, the third Susan Ryeland novel, came out in 2025.

Which Anthony Horowitz book should I read first?

For adults, Magpie Murders (2016); for a lighter series, The Word Is Murder (2017). Younger readers should start Alex Rider with Stormbreaker (2000).

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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