Synopsis: The Fairway Players, a local theatre group, is in the midst of rehearsals for an Arthur Miller play, when tragedy strikes the family of director Martin Haywood and his wife Helen, the play’s star.

Martin admits to the fundraising committee that Lydia Drake was a fraud and that she and the money he gave her has vanished. The QC character, Tanner, just seemed to disappear, and never reappeared to confirm that the students had arrived at the same conclusion as he had. As a voracious reader, I’ve never felt bound to any one genre of publishing, though crime fiction certainly has primacy in my heart. J. Connington Jacques Futrelle James Ronald James Scott Byrnside Jim Thompson John Dickson Carr John Pugmire John Rhode John Sladek Jonathan Creek Josephine Tey Julian Symons Juvenile Mysteries Keikichi Osaka Kelley Roos Kings of Crime Leo Bruce Locked Room International M.It’s early December 2022 and the Fairway Players are rehearsing for their latest command performance: a one-night-only production of Jack and the Beanstalk in aid of the local church’s roof repair fund. This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. You know it’s been a tough year when people are talking about Christmas weeks and weeks before Halloween.

So we made it our thriller of the month in July and it’s been our bestselling title in that slot ever,” said Carvalho. When she refuses to give Wilkinson any information, he insinuates that she’s lying about the lifesaving medication. The Appeal has an epistolary format, and offers a lot of recap, but I will still do a quick summary as there is a LOT going on. Less successful, and perhaps the biggest overall problem, is that this form of telling a story inevitably strips the individual characters of distinction after a while, and in such a large cast — two “lists of people in the story” are provided, the first featuring 34 names, the second a staggering eighty-two— it honestly becomes difficult to keep up.This ingeniously conceived whodunnit encourages the reader to turn detective in a murder case set against the backdrop of an amateur dramatic club. If anyone has insights into the connection between the play and this story, please let me know in comments! Tish is in charge of Poppy’s treatment, which only heightens Sam’s suspicions as to where the money she’s helping to raise is really going.

I don’t know if I missed some bits, but while the solution makes sense, and there are some nice deduction based on subtle hints earlier on, I did not feel the eventual solution had the elegant inevitability that Christie can deliver. Austin Freeman Radio mysteries Ramble House Rex Stout Robert Adey Robert Arthur Robert Innes Robin Stevens Roger Scarlett Ronald Knox Rue Morgue Press Rupert Penny S. Poppy was given chemo and she wasn’t really sick, isn’t that dangerous or something or were Paige, Helen and Poppy just sitting in Tish’s office pretending that Poppy is having chemo? Do you see it that way and why do you think readers are gravitating to this and indeed to true crime?Do not adjust your sets, The Appeal (2021) by Janice Hallett is a modern crime novel that does not contain an apparent impossibility…and yet here I am reading and reviewing it.