Janice Hallett brings us back to Lower Lockwood for another smash-hit story. Yet again Hallett utilises her distinctive epistolary story to lead you down a rabbit hole into a story full of mischief and mayhem. It is exceptional.
Hallett just captures that suffocating small town feeling so well. There is that sense of being in everyone’s business while trying your best to appear above it all. That gossip and paranoia feeds into the central investigation and as a reader, you are swept up in the miniature of life while also knowing a crime is due to come and knowing Hallett, it will be deadly.
The framing device is just as brilliant as in the original. You have the Fairway Players preparing to perform Christie’s The Hollow but behind it all is a tangled web of secrets and lies. The nod to Christie from a potential spiritual successor is tinged with love and respect, even carefully avoiding spoilers. Right from the first page, you are back in that warmly funny, gossipy world of amateur theatre and their tangled interpersonal relationships. There is an ongoing reference to an OBE that made me chuckle in particular. Within the Players, we have both familiar faces returning (and dynamics shifting) and new characters joining the cast too. This keeps it fresh and brings new dynamics into play, which ebb and flow as the story keeps moving relentlessly along. What Hallett is choosing to explore is often entering around the tricky business of love in all its forms here. It is heart-breaking and joyful in different measures as relationships are formed and broken. This is such a unifying topic as we all long to have and keep love in our lives, be that platonic, familial or romantic.
Outside of the Fairway Players, Femi, Charlotte, Roderick and the long suffering Sharon return to unpick this case and slowly reveal to the audience just what happened and who stands accused. This allows you as the reader to play detective alongside them and their text conversations can often echo theories you might have yourself. Of course, by giving the story piecemeal, Hallett can lead you down countless rabbit holes. This keeps the tension sky-high, as you are always trying to piece it together before the big reveals. As usual, I devoured the book and then immediately wanted to reread it to catch everything I missed first time around. These books are deftly crafted stories with so many ingenious details and hidden clues that rewards keen attention to detail and multiple returns to Lower Lockwood.
Hallett’s use of the epistolary format is incredibly clever and the way she updated it for the modern age makes her work so distinctive. It feels immediately authentic and believable. There is this weird delight in being able to see how each person changes depending on who they’re talking to and how quickly they will betray one another. How they talk to one person is immediately undercut by the way they talk to another about the conversation that has just occurred. It is the ultimate people watching and it is so reminiscent of small town gossip. At times, it is frivolous and playful, but at others, it takes on a far more sinister tone. Hallett also delights in double meanings and wordplay. It is a clever manipulation of language that brings new light to scenes when revisited. Seemingly innocuous messages can suddenly have a chilling tone to them and certain reveals have a timely impact amplified by recent events in society.
The Silent Appeal is another example of compelling and consummately excellent cosy crime from a queen of the genre. Long may Hallett continue this vein of stories, as I will continue to enjoy reading each of them.
The Silent Appeal is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up The Silent Appeal? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth?
It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?
But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after twenty years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?
Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence… Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?
