The Appeal by Janice Hallett
What is ‘The Appeal’ about? This small-town (er, village) whodunit has big ‘cozy BBC mystery series’ vibes (as cozy as one can be with a murder on the horizon, that is.) Here’s the gist:
“The Fairway Players, a local theatre group, is in the midst of rehearsals when tragedy strikes the family of director Martin Hayward and his wife Helen, the play’s star. Their young granddaughter has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and with an experimental treatment costing a tremendous sum, their castmates rally to raise the money to give her a chance at survival. But not everybody is convinced of the experimental treatment’s efficacy—or of the good intentions of those involved. As tension grows within the community, things come to a shocking head at the explosive dress rehearsal. The next day, a dead body is found, and soon, an arrest is made. In the run-up to the trial, two young lawyers sift through the material—emails, messages, letters—with a growing suspicion that the killer may be hiding in plain sight. The evidence is all there, between the lines, waiting to be uncovered.”
Why you should read ‘The Appeal’: At first, I wasn’t so sure about The Appeal — Janice Hallett’s bestselling mystery is a modern-day epistolary novel — a book written as a series of letters (or in this case, email exchanges, text messages, voicemails, and more) — with a massive cast of characters to keep track of as you attempt to whittle down the answers to a number of questions: which cast member of a small village’s amateur drama club was murdered? Who did it? And most importantly, why? My only other recent reading experience similar to this format was Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which I ultimately *did* end up loving. Fortunately my opinion on this one ended up being the same; once I got into the rhythm of things, I really enjoyed sifting through the correspondence and piecing together the bigger picture.
