Most people dread the task of going through an inbox exploding with e-mails. But Janice Hallett (The Examiner), queen of epistolary mysteries, has made a career of hooking fans on reading other people's messages, and The Silent Appeal, sequel to Hallett's Dagger award-winning debut, The Appeal, delivers the same charms as its predecessor.
The Fairway Players, an amateur theater company, return with all their drama intact, on and off the stage. Married couple Kevin and Sarah-Jane MacDonald are now co-chairs of the troupe, and they have chosen to produce Agatha Christie's The Hollow as their next play. Tensions rise as not everyone gets the role they want, especially when newcomers to the group are cast in juicy roles over veteran members. But is that enough reason to kill? Because someone ends up dead on opening night, and the murderer is pleading guilty. A former mentor asks young lawyers Femi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd to review the Players' correspondence from the months leading up to the opening, just in case something between the lines--"something unsaid"--could provide a reason for the confessed killer to appeal.
It might be work for Femi and Charlotte, but for readers, it's pure fun to peek into the Players' private thoughts. They gossip and talk trash about one another in text messages but then proceed to write perfectly polite e-mails to those they've been complaining about. In a neat trick, Hallett manages to have the Players discuss and rehearse The Hollow throughout the novel without revealing whodunit in Christie's classic play. The actors may be amateurs, but Hallett's performance is top-notch. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja