The Examiner is another barnstormer of a mystery from a modern queen of mysteries.
Janice Hallett delivers her distinctive style with a fiendish and tricksy story that has plenty of secrets up its sleeves.
For me, Hallett is a modern day Agatha Christie for her inventive take on the mystery genre, intriguing characterisation, and consistently brilliant plot twists. You become used to her unique stylings and the way they completely pull you into the story. This latest offering from Hallett’s nefarious brain continues her distinctive style, a modern twist on the epistolary novel—often combining emails, texts and investigatory transcripts. Here she turns her glare on a twisted Arts degree course that goes very wrong. This masterful mimicry is so true to life and that authenticity is what totally entrances you.
Hallett’s work appeals to the gossip lover hidden within all of us—it is eavesdropping taken to the extreme. As usual, you are invited to play detective yourself, if you can sift between the catty messages to find the hidden secrets within. The reader can piece together scraps from discussion boards, WhatsApp groups, essays and exam transcripts. In particular, I loved the inclusion of the mark sheets for the various assignments on the course. They exposed allegiances and favouritism at play, which takes a turn when further information is revealed. I love how this always places the onus on the reader, you are invited to become an armchair detective and try to solve it for yourself.
However, nothing is ever as simple as it first seems. Hallett has a knack for delivering excellent twists that truly reframe everything you may have thought you knew before. There are several here that completely gobsmacked me. I always think the best types of twists are ones that almost seem obvious in hindsight but completely shock you in the moment. The ones that make you instantly want to go back and re-examine everything to see the clues you missed. Hallett’s brand is delivering these types of twists perfectly. They’re buried in the mass of the little details of life, meaning you miss them to begin with and then they jump out on a reread. It helps that her writing style is so conversational and natural. The pacing is always exquisite, giving you enough titbits through the examiners’ future investigation to keep you lured into the story as a whole. The use of the dual timelines allows for some jaw-dropping reveals and smaller pieces of the overall picture.
We have a fairly insular cast of characters here and you start getting a sense of them quickly through their different messaging styles. You can build up a picture of exactly who they are and the different ‘types’ Hallett is observantly satirising. It adds a bit of humour—that kind of ultimate eavesdropping that allows you to see some of the backstabbing, corruption and collusion here. That balance of humour and tension is always masterfully delivered in Hallett’s work, often with a wry smile and a meta gloss. It is amplified here by the specific choices of media used within the narrative. Often, you can see exactly what someone is saying behind someone else’s back and what they’re saying to their face. The duplicity is incredibly juicy and adds layers to these characters, but the motivations are sometimes left deliberately vague or misleading. You get so invested in these somewhat unlikeable people and Hallett takes you by the hand down the many rabbit holes woven into this narrative.
The Examiner easily secures its spot as one of the top five mysteries I’ve read so far this year. It certainly delivers top marks for murder.
The Examiner is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 10th 2024.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Told in emails, text messages, and essays, this innovative pause-resister follows a group of students in an art master’s program that goes dangerously awry, from the internationally bestselling “new queen of crime” (Electric Literature) Janice Hallett.
Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one.
There’s Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience in art practice aside from running his family’s gallery. Patrick runs an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified. Finally, there is the examiner, the man hired to grade students’ final works—an art installation for a local cloud-based solutions company that may have an ulterior agenda—and who, in sifting through final essays, texts, and message boards, warns that someone is in danger…or already dead. And nothing about this course has been left up to chance.
With her trademark “unique and exhilarating” (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot) voice, Janice Hallett weaves a fresh and mind-bending mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.
