The Appeal by Janice Hallett

447 pages

Publisher: Viper

Book Club Read

Own

 

Blurb

 One Murder.

Fifteen Suspects.

Can You Uncover the Truth?

There is a mystery to solve in the small town of Lockwood. It starts with the arrival of two secretive newcomers, and ends with a tragic death. Roderick Tanner QC has assigned law students Charlotte and Femi to the case. Someone has already been sent to prison for murder, but he suspects they are innocent. And far darker secrets have yet to be revealed…

Through the amateur dramatics society’s disastrous staging of All My Sons and the shady charity appeal for a little girl’s medical treatment, the murderer hit in plain sight. Will Charlotte and Femi solve the case? Will you?

 

Review

 “Arthur Miller constructs a play the way a sculptor creates a three-dimensional image from an amorphous chunk of clay. He shows us a basic shape. Then bends and stretches its contours, turns it for us to view alternate angles, gradually reveals the finer details until, finally, we can see for ourselves what it really is.”

And the same can be said for this story. Nothing is as it appears at first and as the story progresses, deeper and hidden levels are constantly revealed. The big question being how it all ties into the mystery.

It is only thanks to the first two pages, where two young lawyers (?) are tasked to go over the paperwork of a case, that we know we will be dealing with a murder somebody has already be imprisoned for.

The next 2/3s of the book deals with an amateur dramatics group and the real-life drama taking place off stage. Through emails and messages, we get to know the Fairway Players and how they relate to each other. We learn about a young child with cancer and the fundraising efforts to get her an experimental treatment from America. But most of all, we slowly but steadily discover that nobody is exactly how or who they present themselves as. Secrets, past connections, animosity, obsession, fraud, lies, they all float to the surface. Until ultimately, on the premiere of their performance of All My Sons things come to a head. Truths are spoken and accusations made, and they lead to death.

I have to be honest, the cast list in this story is so long that it took me a while before I knew who was who and how they related to each other, and to what was happening. While it was a little frustrating initially, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because keeping track of it all forced me to read slowly and pay attention to all the details. And that, in turn, allowed me to notice the various discrepancies and misdirections I might have missed if I’d read at my normal pace.

The murder is almost an afterthought. In most mysteries, we start with a body after which the investigator tries to figure out the motives and events that led up to and might explain the crime. In The Appeal, we are given all those possible motives and the events that led up to the crime before the murder is committed. You would think that having all that information would make the identity of whodunit obvious. Not for me. I still wasn’t sure who out of an enormous cast of suspects had done the deed.

The murder victim wasn’t who I thought it would be either, although it does make a lot of sense it would be them. The actual murderer was also rather low on my list of suspects, although now that I know, it does make sense that it would be who it is.

The final page and a half were delightfully creepy.

I rarely re-read books, not even mysteries, on purpose, although the occasional title does slip in due to my far-from-perfect memory. However, I can’t help feeling that The Appeal and Hallett’s other titles would greatly benefit from a re-read. While I tried to keep a running list of characters and things that stood out about them and their actions while reading this story, I’m still sure I must have missed a long list of clues. For obvious reasons, I can’t share those notes or the thoughts I had when I wrote them down. The fun (for me) in this mystery is the slow lifting of the veil.

After having read all three of Janice Hallett’s currently available titles I have to conclude that she is something of a genius when it comes to slow reveals and misdirection while still giving the reader all the information they need to keep up with the investigators. Except that the fictional sleuths have so far proven a lot cleverer than I am. Then again, being shocked and surprised by the end of the book is one of the big joys I find in reading mysteries.

I am now caught up with Hallett’s mysteries and eagerly awaiting the release of The Christmas Appeal on October 26^th. The blurb indicates that the story will return us to the Fairway Players and Femi and Charlotte, which should be interesting, to put it mildly. 

Bring. It. On.