The Appeal, author Janice Hallett’s first novel, is a fascinating, inventive mystery told mostly in emails and text messages. It is set in Lockwood, a small town in the UK, where the Fairway Players, a community theater group, is planning to perform Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. The Haywards, Lockwood’s leading family, are the founders of the theater group. The patriarch, wealthy businessman Martin, directs the plays along with his son James, while his wife Helen plays all the leading female roles. Their daughter Paige also has a role in the current production.
Tragedy strikes when the Haywards’ two-year-old granddaughter Poppy, Paige’s daughter, is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. They learn about an experimental treatment in the US, and, to raise the enormous sum of money required, they launch a fundraising appeal with events such as a gala banquet, a half-marathon, yoga classes, and a raffle. Members of the community make generous contributions to the appeal, but tensions come to the surface. Some people don’t believe the experimental drugs really work. The Haywards are taken in by more than one con artist. Martin and Dr. Tish Bhatoa, Poppy’s doctor, clash over Poppy’s treatment. Matters come to a head at the disastrous dress rehearsal.
Two nurses, Samantha Greenwood and her husband Kel, are new to the community after spending years as medical aid volunteers in war-torn regions of Africa. Another nurse, Isabel Beck, latches onto Sam and is eager to introduce her to the community and the theater group. Issy’s friendship quickly turns into an obsession with Sam. She is truly a creepy character. No one in the group likes her much, except James Hayward, and the community’s leading fundraiser, Sarah-Jane MacDonald, tries to keep her off the fundraising committee.
Among the members of the community, Sam is one of the most suspicious of the new treatment. There is also bad blood between her and Dr. Bhatoa because, as we come to realize, Sam was sent away from Africa because she had accused Dr. Bhatoa’s brother, one of the leaders of the medical aid organization, of abusing the people he was supposed to help. At the dress rehearsal, Sam has an outburst, making accusations against Martin, Helen, and others, and walks off in a rage. The next day, someone is murdered, and not long afterwards someone is accused of the crime, convicted, and imprisoned. (To say who the victim was, and who was convicted of the murder, would be a spoiler. I will say that the murder doesn’t take place until about two-thirds of the way through the book. As I was reading it, I knew someone would be murdered, but I didn’t know who.)
The lawyer for the person who was imprisoned for the crime believes his client is innocent, and he enlists the help of two law students, Femi and Charlotte, to read through the correspondence related to the case. So, we are reading the various emails and text messages along with Femi and Charlotte, and occasionally the correspondence is interrupted by their messages to each other, with their theories on the case. The correspondence is given in chronological order, but it is incomplete. We have emails from certain members of the community, but not others. For example, we have Issy’s emails, where we can see her growing obsession with Sam, but we don’t have Sam’s, so we don’t know firsthand how she feels about Issy, except that some other people say she can’t stand her.
As we read various people’s emails, we learn about the relationships among the members of the community, and the social hierarchy. The Haywards are obviously on top of the social ladder, and Issy near the bottom. Sam and her husband Kel are the newcomers trying to find their place. How close people are to the Haywards determines their status in the community. The correspondence gives the reader a fascinating, if incomplete, portrait of the society.
After the murder happens, there are many suspects, and we read the two law students’ various theories about who was falsely accused (information the lawyer deliberately withheld from them, because he wants them to figure it out), and who is actually guilty. The plot takes many unexpected twists and turns, including some I never saw coming. I did not guess who the murderer was, and I was even surprised to find out who was wrongly imprisoned.
I highly recommend this novel. It is truly innovative in its format, and is not a conventional mystery, even though it does have certain elements in common with Agatha Christie (the closed community with a large pool of suspects, and the intricate plot). Janice Hallett is a brilliant storyteller, and I look forward to reading more by her. The book is listed on Goodreads as #1 in the Appeal series, so I assume there will be more books about the Fairway Players coming up, even though Hallett’s second novel and her upcoming third novel seem to feature different sets of characters.
The theater background adds interest, at least to me, even though it is not essential to the plot. As one of the law students says early on, it’s not a book about a play. It did lead me to look up a summary of All My Sons, though, and I could see there were certain parallels in the plot. There are a lot of characters in The Appeal, and it might be hard for readers to keep track of them all at first, but we are given a list of characters early on (another similarity with many of Christie’s books), as well as a cast list, so we can see who plays which role in the play. My only complaint, and it’s a very nitpicky one, is that, even though the book takes place in the UK, money amounts are always given in dollars. The experimental cancer treatment comes from the US, so that might explain why that amount is in dollars, but things like the cost of tickets to the gala banquet and the raffle tickets are also in dollars, with no explanation. But this is a very minor complaint about what is otherwise an excellent novel.
The Appeal is available from the Shapiro Undergraduate Library.