The Appeal by Janice Hallett | Book Review

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The Appeal by Janice Hallett - 4/5

Blurb:

"Dear Reader - enclosed are all the documents you need to solve a case. It starts with the arrival of two mysterious newcomers to the small town of Lockwood, and ends with a tragic death.

Someone has already been convicted of this brutal murder and is currently in prison, but we suspect they are innocent. What's more, we believe far darker secrets have yet to be revealed.

Throughout the Fairway Players' staging of All My Sons and the charity appeal for little Poppy Reswick's life-saving medical treatment, the murderer hid in plain sight. Yet we believe they gave themselves away. In writing. The evidence is all here, between the lines, waiting to be discovered.

Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth?"

Review:

This is a very cleverly written book that puts us, the reader, in the position of a law student.

The novel opens with Roderick Tanner sending a message to two of his first year law students, Olufemi and Charlotte. He sends through all of the correspondence between a group of people to do with a case he is working on. It is written entirely in emails, WhatsApp messages, police interview transcripts, police notebook entries and 999 calls.

We read about a drama group called The Fairway Players, Issy being one of them. She works at St Ann's hospital and introduces new nurses, married couple Samantha and Kel Greenwood into the group. Samantha and Kel previously worked in Africa but why did they come back?

The drama group is very family orientated and the granddaughter of one of the co-founders is diagnosed with Medulloblastoma. Everyone rallies round to create an appeal to raise money for a pioneering treatment from the USA. 

Everything is not as it seems. Someone ends up dead. A lot of people have a reason for the murder.

I have never read a book like this and it is very interesting to basically become the law student trying to find out the truth. There are a lot of red herrings and each one is written so plausibly. You are fully submerged in the story and want to work out what has happened for yourself.