The Appeal by Janice Hallett is an epistolary mystery consisting of e-mails and texts, police reports and other written documents, all pertaining to a court case involving a murder. There's every conceivable chance that readers will have a jolly good time sorting through the documents, which are by turns enthralling, catty, contradictory and witheringly funny.
The Appeal centers on the Fairway Players, an amateur theater company in Lockwood, England. The troupe is working on Arthur Miller's All My Sons when chair Martin Hayward e-mails company members to say that his two-year-old granddaughter has been diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. After Martin reports that a potentially lifesaving American drug is available, though unaffordable, cast and crew throw themselves into fundraising efforts. When someone outside the Fairway community e-mails the campaign coordinator about making an anonymous donation, it's cause for joy--and then suspicion.
In order to keep all the characters straight, readers will have to consult the lengthy list of individuals associated with the acting company repeatedly, but it's a meager price to pay to follow Hallett's first novel, which is consuming and almost unreasonably clever. As in a typical mystery, The Appeal has its share of liars, but Hallett's novel includes an added layer of obfuscation: readers can be no more certain who's behind the name on an e-mail or text than they can be certain who's behind the name on a book review. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer