The Appeal - Janice Hallett

Oh my gosh! Janice Hallett's new novel, The Appeal, is absolutely brilliant!

From Simon and Schuster: "Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell, this “dazzlingly clever” (The Sunday Times, London) murder mystery follows a community rallying around a sick child—but when escalating lies lead to a dead body, everyone is a suspect.

Okay, so that descriptor alone had me hooked. But! What really had me excited was that book is an epistolary novel, told only through emails, messages, memos, newspaper stories, letters and more. I adore this style of story telling.

What else? Well there's a large (but manageable) set of characters (suspects), all with a connection to the Fairway Players, an amateur theater group. One of the troupe has been incarcerated after the death of one of their fellow thespians. Two young law students have been tasked with going through the correspondence in an effort to launch an appeal and clear that conviction.

The clues are slowly revealed from differing viewpoints. I felt like I was in an Agatha Christie novel, trying to ferret out the damning piece of evidence, ready to point my finger with a satisfied ah ha! Well, point I did, but at almost every character along the way. Hallett's plotting is deliciously devious. It's all so very, very clever. The Appeal is easily one of my favorites for the year!

I chose to listen to The Appeal. I wondered if the epistolary element would translated to the audio version well. For this listener it was even better. The readers were Aysha Kala, Daniel Philpott, Rachel Adedeji and Sid Sagar. They all did a spectacular job. There are two female characters that 'speak' more than others. The voices for these two were perfect - Sarah Jane is no nonsense and forceful. Izzy is not as sure of herself and a little clueless and her voice reflects that. The male characters' voices were also perfect for the mental images I was creating - smooth and cultured - and yes, a little bit smarmy. The British accents are very easy to understand. The speed of speaking was just right and was easy to understand. All of the readers captured the tone of the book and interpreted it well, doing justice to Hallett's book. As much as I know I would have enjoyed reading The Appeal, I found the audio version to be even better. Soooooo good!! Hear for yourself - listen to an excerpt of The Appeal.