The Appeal by Janice Hallett
The Appeal, an epistolary novel, opens with a memo from a lawyer asking two of his colleagues to review a case file. “It is best you know nothing before you read the enclosed,” he writes. Other than the fact that there has been a murder and a conviction, his colleagues (and the reader) are in the dark; the name of victim and the convicted are withheld. “See what you think,” he concludes.
Reading through text messages, social media posts, emails, letters, and local news stories, the events leading up to the murder unfold. As they follow the paper trail, the two lawyers occasionally text each other with comments or a hypothesis.
The setting for the crime is an English village where the local drama group is producing Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons. During the rehearsals, the grandchild of one of the participants receives a cancer diagnosis. To help the family pay for an expensive experimental treatment for the girl, the Fairway Players enthusiastically launch an elaborate fundraising campaign which unwitting unlocks a Pandora’s box of secrets and lies. And in due course, a dead body.
A sophisticated twist on the thespian themed village murder.