The Killing Joke [Import] [Paperback]

Anthony Horowitz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: ISIS Paperbacks (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753173484
• ISBN-13: 978-0753173480
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear -- "My father was a very secretive man," he says-- so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.


Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A riot!, March 11, 2005

By 

Beige and Velvet - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Killing Joke (Paperback)

Just like half the fun in a joke is in sharing it with others, I would also recommend and lend this book to my friends. This is probably the funniest thriller I've read. It's craftily written ("We're being attacked by stereotypes!") and doesn't bore one bit. The book starts and ends like a joke, and it follows the path of our protagonist Guy Fletcher who embarks on a mission of searching a sick joke to its origins. In the process, various jokes come to life as they try to make his quest more difficult and he gets chased by an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, an army of nuns, posses of Jews, blacks and homosexuals, finds a fly in his soup, sees a blind man riding a bicycle etc. Ultimately, the riddle "why did the chicken cross the road" leads him to his final destination. There's a love angle thrown in, but it never becomes overbearing so as to lose the focus of the book. A great read!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Humorous, clever and original, but spoiled with faults, May 17, 2011

By 

deudad - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Killing Joke (Paperback)

Anthony Horowitz is a great suspense writer, and he is also very good at making things funny. But The Killing Joke is not Alex Rider. It's more like a quirky James Bond/conspiracy thriller with a lot language and sexual content thrown in for effect.

We're introduced to Guy Fletcher, an actor presently out of work. One evening he goes into a bar and hears a particular joke and decides to track it down until he finds it's origin. This leads to his fantastical adventures that lead him across England. There's more to the story, but that's all you need to know for now.

I've read most of Horowitz's children's' books, like the Alex Rider series, the Gate Keepers series, as well as Groosham Grange. All of the books were very good. Not that they're flawless, particularly Groosham Grange, but all were enjoyable and interesting. The Killing Joke is written very much like Horowitz's other books. Here we have interesting characters, a good plot, an easy writing style, and definite originality. As literature, The Killing Joke can be read at any age. It's something a twelve-year-old could enjoy.

But the frequent strong language and strong sexual content make this book not worth it. The language, I feel, was unnecessary and added nothing to who there characters were. The sexual content, as well, seemed stupid and out of place. I'll get into more detail later when I talk about the characters.

I'll continue with the aspects of The Killing Joke that I didn't like. First of all is the pacing. It is consistent, but very slow. A lot of time is spent on back-story, and wandering around the countryside following the joke. For some reason, it felt forced, as if Hororwitz didn't have material to make a descent sized book.

This leads me to the story, or the plot. In truth, there really isn't a story. The Killing Joke is based on a concept rather than a plot or characters. Albeit, it's a great concept, but I don't think it's enough to hold an entire book. I think it would be better suited for a novella or short story.

Even if the story doesn't work, strong characters can still hold up a book... and this is something The Killing Joke has in short supply. The only character that is developed at all is Guy Fletcher. I found him to be a fun person to follow, and someone I had no trouble rooting for. Other than Guy, though, the other characters were flat and seemed more like placeholders rather than real people. There seemed no real point to Sally. There's never any explanation as to why she even likes Guy. Removing the romantic subplot would have helped with the levels of sexual content, and the general welfare of the book. Alas...

In truth, there were a lot of pointless things that existed and happened. There is no explanation as to why certain things occurred, like armies of stereotypes following Guy, and what is the point of having Sally have an enormously fat mother, among other things? All of these things do nothing to further the plot or characters, only the concept. Even then it's sometimes questionable.

Now, it may seem as if I hate every aspect of this book, but I don't. There are a couple of things that made The Killing Joke readable. The first is Horowitz's writing style. He is a very good writer. He utilizes numerous writing quirks to effectively create a strange and humorous atmosphere. And as I said before, the concept is very imaginative and original. I like it a lot. Also, Horowitz combines plentiful clichéd elements and uses them to his advantage, which is clever, and some thing I really enjoy. And much of the book is downright funny.

Over all, The Killing Joke is readable, but nothing more. Most of the characters are flat, the plot drags, and the concept would be happier in a short story. Not to mention the amount of language and sexual content and pointless situations. While there are good aspects, they do not outweigh the bad.

Because of this, I do not recommend you read The Killing Joke.

2.0 out of 5 stars This book is a joke, May 28, 2011

By 

Geert Daelemans (Leuven Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Killing Joke (Paperback)

How would you feel if you overheard a bloke in a bar telling a joke featuring your own mother? This is exactly what happens to Guy Fletcher when he visits his local pub. To be fair, the mother is the much loved actress Selina Moore and no-one actually knows that Guy is her son. Completely flabbergasted by the rudeness of the joke, Guy decides to track down its origin. Indeed, his life is already down the drain, so who cares what kind of silly things he gets up to. Not only will he fall in love during his quest, he will also find out that not all jokes are created just for fun. Yes, he will soon discover that there really exists an Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman.

Good ideas are not always guarantee to great stories and The Killing Joke sadly turns out to be one big proof of this rule. Although Antony Horowitz masterly succeeds in creating the perfect intro to a hilarious yarn, it does not take long before the story gets to a point where you've been before and starts repeating the same gimmicks. After a few chapters it is overly clear that the world of Guy has been turned into one big joke and the reader has no need in getting that obvious fact repeated over and over. The only reason why I kept reading on was that I still had some hope for a big conclusion, with -if allowed- a surprise ending. True, the denouement is rather surprising, but only in the way that it is in the race for most stupid and annoying ending of a novel ever. I would have fallen asleep, if it wasn't for the annoyance I felt after finishing this book.

This book is a joke (no pun intended).