Point of View

Anthony Horowitz is the first-person narrator and the main character of the novel. Horowitz sums up what is happening in the opening sentence of the novel: “My publishers, Penguin Random House, have offices on the Vauxhall Bridge Road, the other side of Victoria” (1). At this point, Horowitz is going to talk to his publishers about the second book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, a book on which he is still working. He has not yet considered the topic for this novel, the third novel. Horowitz is a biased narrator. He has strong opinions about the people he meets and the situations he encounters. For instance, he does not believe a literary festival on a tiny island that is sponsored by a gambling company sounds like a good festival to attend.

As a biased narrator, Horowitz tends to extend his bias to his reader. At...