Review: The Christmas Appeal, by Janice Hallett

DESCRIPTION

THE CAST OF SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING THE APPEAL RETURN FOR
A FESTIVE MURDER MYSTERY

One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth?
Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, to raise money for the church roof appeal.
But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking amongst the amateur dramatics enthusiasts. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up.

Of course there’s also the matter of the dead body. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list?

Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they read the round robins, examine the emails and pore over the police transcripts. Will the show go on?

My Review

Thanks to Anne for organising this blog tour and to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.

I would describe it as an epistolary novella. It’s 187 pages of text messages, emails and police interview transcripts which tell the story of an am-dram society in a small town preparing for the Christmas panto and discovering a body. There’s an accidental drug deal and stroppy teenagers, gossip and back stabbing.

The emails and texts between group members show us the personalities of the people involved and the events, with Charlotte and Femi acting as the reader and interpreting the data for the reader. Their texts to each other and retired K.C. Roderick Tanner, frame the story and explicate events. Tanner is testing the younger legal professionals: would they hide evidence of murder if they thought the death was acceptable?

I loved the sniping between the MacDonald and Halliday families; the snobbery is marvellous! Anyone who has been part of a longstanding community group will recognise the dynamics. There are some interesting back stories going on here. I tried to puzzle a few out, but I haven’t read The Appeal, set in the same town and with the same characters.

I rather enjoyed this book. It took me a couple of hours to read and kept me thoroughly entertained while I figured out what was going on and got to know the characters.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Janice Hallett is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Appeal (a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, the Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year and winner of the CWA Debut Dagger award) and the Sunday Times bestsellers The Twyford Code and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels. She lives in West London.

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