- The Ogden School Foundation recently hosted writer, "Anthony Horowitz," for their fall author event.

PBS Utah had a chance to sit down with the bestselling author to ask him about his books, his work for TV, and about, "Moonflower Murders," that he's adapting for PBS.

Alright, well thanks for being with us.

- It's a real pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

- We are delighted.

So, to start things off, I wanna know, when you first got the idea for "Magpie Murders," how did it begin?

What was the idea?

And when did you know you actually had a story there?

- Gosh, it's such a difficult question to answer 'cause I could talk for an hour to explain where it all came from.

But the first impetus was the idea, which came from, "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," disliking, "Sherlock Holmes," as I'm sure you know.

But he thought Sherlock Holmes was beneath him, which is why he pushed him off the rack and back falls.

And so, my first thought was, "Why don't I write a story about a writer, a modern writer, who has created a successful detective, but feels that it belittles him, but he hates this detective and wants to sort of get rid of him?"

So that was the core of the idea, but I was also at that time, very interested in writing about murder mystery itself.

I've always had a fascination, 'cause I've written so much, and this is very much what I'm gonna be talking about tonight.

I've always had a fascination with why we read murder stories and why I write them.

And so, I wanted to write something that would allow me to both write a murder mystery story and at the same time examine the mechanics of it and look at what's happening and why we're reading it.

So writing about a writer who has written a murder mystery, which doesn't have an ending, was sort of an elaborate puzzle box.

It could allow me to disentangle the entire nature of this sort of writing and examine what's going on.

And I have to say that the book itself, it took me about 15 months to write, which is much, much longer than I normally take.

But it took me more than 10 years to think up and to structure and to get right.

And the proof of this is that if you watch an early episode of, "Midsomer Murders," a show I was writing in Britain for, "ITV," one of the characters, 10 or even 15 years before the book appears in the shops, is already reading a copy of it, 'cause I had it made up.

(host laughing) And it was there in the TV series, this book I was working on even then.

- Holy cow.

- That's right.

- That's amazing.

So speaking of, "Midsomer Murders," you took your own book, "Magpie Murders," you adapted it for television.

This is your work that you adapted, but you also adapted, "Caroline Graham's," books for, "Midsomer Murders."

Tell me about your different approaches.

- I think they were probably quite similar actually because the first thing you have to do when you're adapting a book, particularly one as complicated as, "Magpie Murders," which runs to, I think, about, is it 600 pages, and a lot of characters, a lot of twists and turns.

But also, one of Caroline's books, which are themselves, very cleverly worked out and structured.

The first thing you have to recognize is, you can't put it all on the screen, and that audiences won't accept that amount of detail and those characters and these twists and these turns.

Unlike a book, when you're watching television, you can't stop and go back 50 pages and work out who that character is.

So you have to understand that the process of adapting is one of desecration to a certain extent.

You have a book which you may consider to be perfect, particularly if you've written it yourself.

But you have to say, "No, I've got to cut it about now, which to do this, that and the other, to turn it into workable television."

So it is an act of dismantling, though one done with great respect.

I wouldn't have adapted the, "Caroline Graham," books if I hadn't loved them.

I think they are brilliant.

They were called, "Agatha Christie on acid," which is a great description of what they are.

And I love running those first seven episodes and really creating that series, but the process was more or less the same.

"Magpie Murders," the television version, has huge differences to the book.

And the author of the book might well complain if it wasn't me.

So I was actually happy on both fronts.

- Are you more inclined to desecrate your works or someone else's?

- Well, "desecrate," I said that, but it's not entirely true what is (indistinct), because you are hoping to create something that is as good in a different way.

All I'm saying to say is, and I use that word simply to say, you can't put something, on an ivory tower.

You can't say, "This is perfect.

I can't change it."

When I adapted, "Stormbreaker," my own novel, which I didn't do entirely successfully, to be honest with you.

Even there, I was seeing things that I loved in the book, but which for one reason or another I could not put into the feature film.

And they just had to go, and you just sort of lose those babies and it sort of, it hurts in a way, but it has to be done.

- How do you feel about the term, "Cozy Mysteries?"

- We call it, "Cozy Crime."

And it's funny you should ask me that because it is one of my little bête noire.

It's not a phrase I ever use.

Because I always say that even in the context of an entertainment, or an Agatha Christie novel, or a TV drama, whatever it might be, murder is never cozy.

The taking somebody's life is the ultimate in violence and horror.

It is the worst thing we can do, which is why the prison sentences for it, which used to be a capital punish to this country, they still are, you know, are so extreme.

So I don't ever call it, "Cozy Crime."

And that phrase, which is used over and over again, slightly annoys me.

It irritates me because, I didn't want my books to be thought of that way.

I know that they're not violent and I like the fact that there is a genre of books that does not glorify in violence, that does not have women being attacked in horrible ways or children or...

There isn't an extreme quantity of blood and all that sort of stuff.

That doesn't interest me, any of that.

But I wouldn't like to think that my characters are all cozy and soft and insipid, and not worthy of a little bit of hard examination.

- It is a strange term.

- Well, I'm glad you asked.

- Yeah, I've long thought the same thing.

We cozy up with this tale of someone killing someone else.

- That's right, and killing is never cozy.

- Right.

Is there in any way that those terminologies are useful when you're thinking about writing a book though?

Do you think in terms of a, "Detective thriller," or a "Cozy Crime," or something like that when you're sitting down to write?

- No, I don't.

The phrase I would use more often is, "Golden age."

I'm very drawn to the golden age of detective fiction.

Not that I find all those books completely enjoyable anymore.

Some of them are a little bit slow, and some of them are a little bit pompous even.

A lot of 'em were written by quite sort of academic types.

But I do like that world of sort of that slightly nostalgic world, in which forensics and mobile phones and computers have no part to play, where it is all done cerebrally rather than... Cerebrally?

Is that the correct word?

In your mind.

I love Sherlock Holmes for that reason, that he only uses his ability to observe and to analyze, and to come to the correct solution.

When everything that you've considered is impossible, what is left must be the truth, that sort of thing.

So... That was a terrible misquote, but you know what I mean.

So I like that sort of, I like the separation between then and now.

And when I'm writing "Magpie Murders," and, "Moonflower Murders," the sequel, It's rather fun than I get both and on the TV series, both at the same time.

And I really enjoy doing the crossover between the two worlds.

- You mentioned Sherlock Holmes, I have to ask... You wrote a very well received, "Sherlock Holmes," pastiche, "House of Silk."

This is for my own self.

And then you wrote, "Moriarty."

That was in 2014.

It is now 2023.

(laughing) - So... - Where's that sequel?

- A third one?

Well, there is a sort of an odd project of mine coming out later this year, which I sort of co-wrote.

And I'm not entirely sure what people are gonna make of it.

It's a, "Sherlock Holmes," story, but it's set in the sort of near future.

So it's the modern age indeed.

It's edging towards science fiction.

And it's playing with Sherlock Holmes in a rather sort of sacrilegious way.

I say that because I'm such a worshiper of Doyle and his work.

But nonetheless, it was brought to me by a company.

And at the time, COVID was happening and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I thought it might be fun.

I'll be interested to see what people make of it.

- Hmm.

And that's for television or that's... - No, it's actually an audio book.

It's not gonna be published, as far as I know.

It's going to be, you listen to it.

This is a company called, "Story Tell," which I think is a Norwegian company, and they're huge in the world of audio.

And I have a great fondness for audio books, not personally for myself.

I'd prefer to read than to have someone read to me, but I know that they are an enormous comfort to people.

And of course, on long journeys, there's nothing better.

- Yep, exactly.

So getting back to this mystery genre that you have carved out such a niche for yourself, you've written thrillers, very successfully, you've written mysteries, you've written adventure books, but I wonder why you continue to return to mysteries at this point?

- Well, two things have happened.

The first is mainly that I've given up writing children's books largely, or (YA), "Young adult fiction."

That's partly because of my age and also, a feeling that the world of YA fiction is in a bad place at the moment.

So I'm not sure that I can contribute to it.

So that's the first thing that's happened.

But the second thing that's happened is that my adult writing has taken off.

I didn't expect it to, when I started with... "The House of Silk," was one of my very first adult novels, and it was such a success.

And this has led me into a sort of a new career almost.

And I'm having a blast.

I'm enjoying it.

I so love the world of murder mystery.

I love the other writers that I get to meet here in America and back home as well.

I love the fraternity and sorority that we are of writers and the way we support each other.

And I love the sort of the fact that crime stories have had such a huge impact on people.

It's an interesting fact that during COVID, and I'm speaking here about the United Kingdom, there was a 5% spike in books sold because of course people had less to do and were at home.

But what I think was really interesting was that it was, "Crime Fiction," that spiked the most.

That's what people wanted to read.

And I always think it's interesting, and this is again, something I'm gonna talk about tonight, the way that we find such comfort and such a sense of healing and wholeness in crime fiction.

It's one of the sort of strange things of life that violent stories about death and ugly actions can have this very cathartic effect on people.

- It's true, but I think also in addition to that, as you say, there's the puzzle.

It keeps our mind active.

It's gives us something to think about.

- There's a lot to unpicking the question you asked me, because of course I've always loved puzzles.

I love beguiling people.

When I was younger, I loved magic and magic tricks.

"Moriarty," one of the novels I wrote, my second, "Sherlock Holmes," book, is actually based on a card trick.

The entire book works on a simple card trick that I learned at school, and I've love illusion.

If you come to my house in London, you will see magic tricks, toys, illusions.

We have a secret passage in the house.

So everything in my life is devoted to, to puzzlement and to bafflement, and to tantalizing, and even to cheating an audience.

I always do play fair, but, "Moriarty," for example, one of my favorite books, plays a terrible, terrible trick on the reader.

And the reason for it was that I was writing about the most evil man in the world.

So I thought, let's write the most evil book.

And the idea was you get to the last page and look at it and say, "What have I just read?"

And hurl the book across the room, - I think I did that.

which some people...

I met somebody the other day who said they were listening to it on audio, (you were talking about audio), and they said they nearly crashed the car when they got to the twist.

I said, I was delighted.

I thought, I almost wish they had crashed the car.

It would make an even better story, nobody being hurt of course.

(host chuckling) - I remember feeling quite outraged.

- Well, outrageous is, but that said, the book plays 100% fair with you.

There is not a single thing in that book that is a cheat or a lie.

- So you're adapting, "Moonflower Murders," for, "PBS."

- I have adapted it.

- The work is done.

We are filming.

- It's done!

- No, it is pretty much done.

We have been filming for, oh goodness knows, I must be about 10, 12 weeks in Ireland.

- Okay.

- And we go to Crete next week and I go myself, physically, to Crete for two weeks shooting out there because in the new story, "Moonflower Murders," as you know in the book, it opens in Crete where Susan is running a hotel with her long-term partner, Andreas.

And so, we're shooting the opening of the series in Crete in October, and I'm going there with my wife and such, and I'm, even in this hotel this afternoon, I've been watching the dailies from the shoot in Ireland.

- Okay.

- And I have to say that we are so fortunate in that first we managed to reassemble our absolutely wonderful cast headed by Lesley and Tim, but also with, "Conleth Hill," and, "Matthew Beard," and many of the others, and the wonderful, "Danny Mays," as, "Chubb and Locke."

So we've got our family back together again.

"Peter Cattaneo," did an absolutely fantastic job directing the first season.

Couldn't make it to do the second.

But we then were very fortunate in that a director called, "Rebecca Gatward," has stepped in and has done a sensational job.

I was sitting in my hotel room this afternoon looking at the entire assemblies of week 10 and just thinking, "Wow, did I really write this?

How did it get to be so good?"

That's what a good director brings to a script.

They make it better.

It's been a lovely relationship, incidentally, with PBS.

It's been very successful here in the States.

And I'm happy to say also, originally, it was trapped in a rather small streamer called, "BritBox," but it's now been released.

And so, the BBC showed it last our spring, which was great.

And they're going to show the next one, hopefully next spring.

And I can't wait for you to see it.

I'm so excited.

- Well, we are excited to see it.

As my last question, I have wondered, I've wondered about this for a while.

As someone who takes books, adapts them, writes your own books, adapts those, if you could adapt any book that you wanted for television, what would it be?

- Well, I'd love to do a classic.

I'd like to do, "New Grub Street," by, "George Gissing," I was talking about just 10 minutes ago in another interview.

It's one of my very favorite books.

Something from the 19th century to do it, not Dickens.

I think Dickens has perhaps been an overdone, but maybe a, "Trollope," or something of that sort or else...

I don't know.

I mean, something epic, something big, a, "Don Quixote," type book, "Miguel Cervantes," something that's a really major piece of writing.

I always like to adapt to a book I think, by a writer who is better than me.

So that is why, you know, working on something like a, "Doyle," or an, "Ian Fleming," or any of those sorts of things, that to me inspires me.

So a big classic, a big epic, something that everybody knows.

- We will watch for your, "Trollope," adaptation to come.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.