(no subject)

[skygiants]

I picked The Appeal up after reading littlerhymes post about it -- it's a modern epistolary murder mystery told as a collection of emails, text messages, letters, etc. passing between the various members of a dysfunctional community theater group.

The book is set up as a puzzlebox mystery, very explicitly so. The two major plot threads include:

- the troupe founder's ongoing fundraiser to raise massive amounts of money to treat his grandchild's rare brain cancer by shipping a rare experimental drug that may or may not exist in from America and the theater group's variously chaotic attempts to support it

and

- one troupe member's increasingly clingy obsession with the her new best work-and-theater friend, a former Doctors Without Borders volunteer who left her post Under Mysterious And Dramatic Circumstances

Tension on these two plot threads ratchets up to the middle of the book when Someone Dies ....

... at which point the two lawyers who have been sent all this massive pile of correspondence by their boss get sent a set of questions to answer: "who in this correspondence is lying? who is wrongfully imprisoned? who doesn't actually exist?" etc. etc., send a flurry of text messages, send their best guess back, get some things wrong, get a bit more correspondence, and are encouraged to try again. This is all a bit contrived but also very fun; between the structure and the fact that Janice Hallett is extremely good at satirizing a variety of very recognizable Styles of Bad Email, I'm not surprised it's a massive bestseller. The contortions of the plot are pretty absurd and I have some qualms about its portrayal of the Heroic White Whistleblowing Aid Worker; the book really does not have enough substance to support its very occasional attempts to comment upon the foreign aid industry in Africa but it's nonetheless a an extremely addictive read -- very much like devouring a very long and juicy r/hobbydrama post.

& then I saw that Hallett had also written a sequel, The Christmas Appeal, and laughed so hard at the chutzpah of writing a Christmas-themed tie-in sequel novella to a deeply cynical hobby drama murder mystery novel about fundraising fraud that I immediately got it out of the library as well. It is indeed a lighthearted and silly romp (murder is still involved) and I also had a good time with it while continuing to find the whole premise absurd. Hallett is definitely going to be on my list of airplane reads going forward.

Comments

[lirazel]

very much like devouring a very long and juicy r/hobbydrama post

You have such a gift for coming up with a phrase that both summarizes a book's appeal and makes me want to read it!

laughed so hard at the chutzpah of writing a Christmas-themed tie-in sequel novella to a deeply cynical hobby drama murder mystery novel about fundraising fraud

Incredible!

[ceitfianna]

I've been stuck on what to read and this looks like fun and I love a good documents style mystery. I've also been curious about this author's other books and this is the push I needed to give them a try.

[littlerhymes]

She truly understand the essence of a Bad Email!

Another crime author I read recently (Benjamin Stevenson, not as fun as Hallett imo) ALSO has a Christmas novella coming out? IS THIS A THING NOW???

[cyphomandra]

Ooh I didn’t realise there was a Christmas sequel, will have to have a look.

I liked The Appeal but haven’t liked her subsequent unrelated ones as much (The Twyford Code and the Alperton Angels).

[raven]

I haven’t read this one, but slight warning against The Twyford Code- it wanted to be fun, but I mostly found it wasn’t. It is I think trying for a satire on Da Vinci Code type conspiracy, but comes out frustrating.

[imbir]

I remember hurdling this book's contrivances got easier as it went along and the race was over before I knew it, but it did leave me pretty sore.

Janice Hallett is extremely good at satirizing a variety of very recognizable Styles of Bad Email
Yeah, this really softened my 'this email could have been a meeting' eyerolls. It was kind of like reading the transcript of an actual play podcast that was 90% intros.

How did you like the framing story? I felt like the law students' whole situation and convenient leaps of logic would have been easier to swallow had they been actual characters interacting with the world rather than chatbots working their way through the kind of book club questions you find at the back of a bestseller. Also, it felt a bit prestige-TV that their boss kept stressing they didn't have a lot of time to unravel the mystery and confirm his suspicions, but he kept presenting them with stale/incomplete evidence and drip-feeding them new evidence uncovered since the hearing for no real reason other than the book's structure demands that he do this. Is training law students to treat suspected miscarriages of justice like a game of Among Us ethically justifiable? Don't worry about it.

[kaberett]

... oh look, the library has it...

[kore]

Yeah, The Appeal was fun but those two books were pretty disappointing.

[venetia_sassy]

I tried both of those and found them a bit exhausting and overly complicated but The Appeal is sounding like it might be more fun?

[dhampyresa]

a lighthearted and silly romp (murder is still involved)

:')

[chestnut_pod]

It is just like a very long and juicy Hobby Drama post; what a great way to describe it.

[mozaikmage]

This sounds very fun, adding it to my TBR! Have you read An Unauthorized Fan Treatise? It's less puzzly but similarly hobbydramaish, if also very fandomy.

[lannamichaels]

This sounds interesting but I'm a little wary of murder mysteries and some kinds of plots, would you be willing to spoil things for me? Especially regarding the kid with brain cancer, does he exist? Does he survive? Who is the person murdered and was the perpetrator known to them?

[skygiants]

It's SUCH a choice but I'm sure it sold like hotcakes, so good for her!

[skygiants]

Seems like from comments that this is definitely the one to go with!

[skygiants]

I expect Christmas novellas from romance authors, but it is SO FUNNY to see it infiltrating the mystery/thriller space. looking forward to Gillian Flynn's next work of heartwarming holiday joy!

[skygiants]

hmm, good to know, that seems to be a solid consensus of comments! maybe I'll quit while I'm moderately ahead then ...

[skygiants]

ughhhh good to know, thank you! comments seem to be in agreement that this one is the cream of the crop, such as it is ...

[skygiants]

I was torn on it tbh -- on the one hand I moderately resented the authorial hand dropping in a large and unconvincing pointing finger through the medium of the law students to jolt me out of the story, on the second hand I thought the 'reader's digest logic puzzlebox' format was so blatant that it wrapped around to being funny to me, and on the third hand I did laugh when their lawyer boss could not figure out WhatsApp ... a cheap but effective chortle.

[skygiants]

that's how it got me!

[skygiants]

CHRISTMAS murder!

[skygiants]

We've all lost hours of our lives this way!

[skygiants]

Yeah, I read it last year (keep meaning to write it up and then not having time) and I was thinking about that while reading this too! I've been vaguely meaning to read the full published book version, too, though perhaps damning that I've not seen a single person talk about it.

[skygiants]

For sure, I'm happy to! In rot13: gur xvq qbrf rkvfg ohg gur oenva pnapre qbrf abg (juvpu jnf cerggl rivqrag gb zr sebz rneyl ba va gur obbx gou) -- gur gur xvq fheivirf naq vf svar, gubhtu gurer vf n Qrnq Xvq Erirny va gur onpxfgbel nyfb.

Gur zheqre ivpgvz vf gur sbezre Qbpgbef Jvgubhg Obeqref ahefr jub'f trggvat fhfcvpvbhf bs gur shaqenvfvat rssbeg; gur zheqrere vf xabja gb ure ohg abg va gur jnl jurer vg'f n cebsbhaq crefbany orgenlny. Unccl gb cebivqr zber fcbvyre qrgnvyf ba nal bs guvf vs erdhrfgrq!

Gur bgure guvat gung V jvyy zragvba nygubhtu lbh qvq abg nfx vg vf gung bar bs gur fhocybgf vaibyirf gur fvghngvba gung pnhfrq gur zheqre ivpgvz gb yrnir Qbpgbef Jvgubhg Obeqref -- fur sbhaq bhg gur urnq bs ure pyvavp jnf frkhnyyl nohfvat cngvragf naq oyrj gur juvfgyr. Gur nohfr & nohfre ner abg bafperra ng nyy, ohg uvf fvfgre jub'f nofbyhgryl pbaivaprq bs uvf vaabprapr vf.

[lannamichaels]

Thanks for the details, that's very helpful!

[mozaikmage]

I just checked and apparently the novel version is coming out in August under a different title (Last Seen Online) so maybe that's why no one's been talking about it recently?
The synopsis on the author's website makes it sound like a sequel to auft actually...