Janice Hallett’s debut is a refreshingly original novel told in epistolary format and made up of emails, texts, police transcripts and WhatsApp messages. It is also an opportunity for the reader, according to the premise, to test their powers of dedication alongside law students, Olufemi (Femi) Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, both of whom are training under Roderick Tanner QC. A client of Tanner’s is currently serving time for a murder that he believes they did not commit, with the real killer having given themselves away in the various snippets of recovered communication and he needs Femi and Charlotte to see it too as he prepares for the appeal.
The Hayward’s are the alpha family in the small town of Lockwood with husband and wife, Martin and Helen, co-owning The Grange country club and the director and lead actress respectively of the Fairway Players amateur dramatics society. They either employ or cast a number of those in the local community and it pays to keep in with them, with the influential MacDonald’s slightly further down the food chain. When Martin announces their next play, clingy nurse Isabel Beck is thrilled to bring along her new colleague plus her husband, Sam and Kel Greenwood, both recently returned from voluntary work overseas and new to the area. Parts have barely been cast before Martin delivers the bombshell news that his two-year-old granddaughter, Poppy, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Following consultation with her oncologist the family launch a crowdfunding appeal in the hope of raising enough money to purchase an experimental drug from the US, believed to be Poppy’s best chance of survival. The sprawling plot covers everything from the fundraising effort, family tensions, issues at work for nurses Isabel and Sam as well as personal relationships and it unfolds at a brisk pace with complications aplenty. Although there are a fair number of characters involved in the events, the whole thing has a soap opera feel and it doesn’t take long to understand how everyone is connected as well as suss out their opinions of each other! Fast-moving and frequently hilarious, I was quickly hooked trying to read between the lines and lapped up the gossipy goings-on, judgy attitudes and social hierarchy within this small subset of the community.
It quickly becomes apparent that there is a high degree of selectivity to the chosen information that the reader is made privy to, such as only seeing one side of a conversation to only seeing some characters through the eyes of others. At 70% Tanner reveals that what we have read is the recovered correspondence submitted at the original hearing and sets his two law students questions to explore, before challenging them to come up with their own theories. Whilst I really enjoyed the students initial discussion of the case, I was disappointed to find out that what I had read was all smoke and mirrors effectively with key pieces of information undisclosed, making it impossible for the uninformed reader to solve. When Tanner supplies additional pieces of correspondence and reveals that “three masquerade as others, one does not exist at all”, it started to feel a tad gimmicky and like Hallett’s focus shifted to delivering an overly convoluted solution with the law students left to tell all to the reader. Overall great fun but slightly too long and not quite the fair play mystery that the premise implies.
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was absolutely blown away by this book. It is just so amazingly clever and well presented that I now find myself looking for more books in this style.Rather than the story unfolding in the traditional prose we expect from a novel, the book is made of correspondence that is provided to solicitors as evidence in a murder case. As the reader, you are to read through all the emails, notes, text messages etc provided, as if you yourself are reviewing the case to determine what happened. It does take a little getting used to; there is a large number of characters involved; some we hear form frequently and others just once or twice but after a few pages, it becomes easier to get your head around.I am in awe of the author and how they were able to change writing style, personality, intelligence when writing as the different characters - it is just so well done that you do believe you are actually reading real emails from real people. I think we all know a 'Joyce' in real life!Despite all the 'evidence' being provided, it did still hold some surprises and some plot twists. I may have possibly sworn out loud a few times as things started to fall into place.This is up there as one of the best books I've read for a while.
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