28th September 2024

Janice Hallett returns for yet another of her genius mystery stories presented in the form of found written material.

This time, the notes come from an MA course in art, and include coursework, the teacher’s and students' notes, and informal communication between them, as what starts out a standard marking process becomes much more suspicious.

The concept is amazing to conceive and must take so much effort and thought to put together so meticulously. I particularly love how secrets are kept in plain sight for so long and just astound when they are revealed.

However I did think this time the ending felt somewhat unsatisfactory, and I’m not sure I entirely followed all of the final twists and reveals.

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28th October 2023

A novella from Janice Hallett revisiting the scene of her breakthrough novel was an irresistible purchase for me.

It’s five years or so later, and once again we are treated to a mystery in the form of a collection of correspondence - email, text, WhatsApp etc - between the members of an amateur dramatic group, as something horrible unfolds.

It retains all the delight of the original book, and although I read through most of it in the course of a single train journey, I really enjoyed it. There’s a lot to think about, a lot to keep track of, and lots to laugh at.

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4th March 2023

Janice Hallett’s third novel takes her format - the novel equivalent of a found-footage film - on a new journey as we follow the writing of a true crime book, and the author’s interactions and investigations as she tries to uncover what really happened.

This one is a bit of a hybrid presentation compared to the first two - some is correspondence, emails and text messages, and some is transcripts of audio recordings.

Thanks to a delayed train journey, I got through the book in 48 hours. But it is that gripping and the format really helps make it incredibly readable.

The plot is darker than the previous entries right from the start. To the extent that I even had a bad dream that seemed to have been inspired by it.

Overall though another great story, and I’m looking forward to more from Hallett in the coming years.

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5th April 2022

Hallett’s second novel is a similar but different take on the style of her first - this time presenting the entire narrative in the form of transcripts of audio recordings, as a recently released convict records his life story, and what he gets up to, into his estranged son’s old phone.

It took me a little while to get my head into reading this style, but once there I absorbed the story as fast as possible and was totally hooked.

Hallett does a really great job of drip feeding information about multiple different narrative threads all at the same time. The book must have taken really extensive planning to work everything out and fit it into the structure so perfectly.

It’s also funny. There are a bunch of little Easter eggs hinting at some of the inspirations for parts of the story, and the main character is thoroughly likeable.

Another really good story, and I’m looking forward to more of this kind of thing.

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31st October 2021

I bought this book entirely on the promise of the cover and the large presentation table of them in my local bookshop, and I was not disappointed.

While the tale is a classic mystery - with a wide ranging set of characters, all of whom are suspects - the unique twist in this book is the way it’s presented.

The conceit is a framing story about two lawyers who are sent the case by their boss, in the form of an incomplete set of correspondence between all the suspects in the months leading up to the crime. And it’s through this set of mostly emails that they, and we, get to learn about the case and try to solve the mystery.

It’s a really good fun way to tell the story, and I could barely put the book down, racing through it. I’m really looking forward to Hallett’s next novel in the new year.

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