📖 Publication Day Review ~ The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

 

Viper/Serpent's Tail
Hardback 26 October 2023

The Appeal #1.5

My thanks to the publisher for my ecopy of this book

One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth?

Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, to raise money for the church roof appeal. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking amongst the amateur dramatics enthusiasts. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up.

Of course there's also the matter of the dead body. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they read the round robins, examine the emails and pore over the police transcripts. Will the show go on?

📖 My Review..

When I was approached by the publisher to read The Christmas Appeal I immediately said yes as I loved reading this author's fabulous debut, The Appeal, which fired my imagination , and so it is with great delight that I return to the company of the Fairway Players as they countdown to their annual Christmas Pantomime.

With her usual flair, the author plunges us deep into the frantic preparations for Jack and the Beanstalk and as emails, and messages, fly to and fro between the actors, we soon start to understand that all is not well with this group of amateur thespians. The epistolary theme gives the story its quirkiness and as  the banter and cutting comments start to flow, so we start to build up a picture of what happened, where, when and to whom.

It can take a little while to become comfortable with this style of narrative but I enjoy the way the story unfolds and I pretty soon became immersed in trying to piece together the clues which are so carefully presented.  Overall, The Christmas Appeal is great fun to read, laugh out loud funny in places, and entering into the ‘acting’ world which this talented author creates so beautifully is a real joy as not only does she give us all the back room shenanigans, and believe me there is a lot going on behind the scenes, but there’s also a rather interesting murder mystery to solve.

Cleverly created to be a shortish novella, The Christmas Appeal sits comfortably alongside The Appeal bringing together the company of players we recognise from the first story whilst at the same time introducing new people who add their own special charm to this intriguing murder mystery. I absolutely loved it and read in one sitting as, like all this author’s books, I simply couldn’t put it down.

About the Author

Janice Hallett studied English at UCL, and spent several years as a magazine editor, winning two awards for journalism. After gaining an MA in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, she co-wrote the feature film Retreat. The Appeal is inspired by her lifelong interest in amateur dramatics. Her second novel, The Twyford Code, is published by Viper in 2022. When not indulging her passion for global adventure travel, she is based in West London.

Twitter @JaniceHallett #TheChristmas Appeal

@ViperBooks

📖 Featured Book of the Month ~ The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

 

Viper Books
19 January 2023

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

Open the safe deposit box. Inside you will find research material for a true crime book. You must read the documents, then make a decision. Will you destroy them? Or will you take them to the police?

Everyone knows the story of the Alperton Angels: the cult-like group who were convinced one of their member's babies was the anti-Christ, and they had a divine mission to kill it - until the baby's mother, Holly, came to her senses and called the police. The Angels committed suicide rather than go to prison, and Holly - and the baby - disappeared into the care system.

Nearly two decades later, true-crime author Amanda Bailey is writing a book on the Angels. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen and can finally be interviewed - if Amanda can find them, it will be the true-crime scoop of the year, and will save her flagging career. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby's trail.

As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realise that what everyone thinks they know about the Angels is wrong, and the truth is something much darker and stranger than they'd ever imagined.

This story is far from over - and it won't have a happy ending.

📖 My Review..

As always this clever author draws the reader right into the mystery of the Alperton Angels with this intriguing opening message...

"Open the safe deposit box. Inside you will find research material for a true crime book. You must read the documents, then make a decision. Will you destroy them? Or will you take them to the police?"

Bringing the epistolary novel right up to date, the story of the mysterious Alperton Angels comes to light in a series of clever communications between the main protagonists, as they seek to discover more about a series of killings which took place eighteen years previously and of the baby who mysteriously disappeared at the time and who is now about to come of age. The menacing atmosphere of this cult like group is revealed ever so slowly in a series of emails, text messages, conversation transcripts, and for Amanda Bailey, an author who has been commissioned to write a true exposé of the events, there are far more questions about this sinister group of people than she could ever have imagined.

Absolutely believable from the outset and with all the trademarks we have come to expect from this talented author The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels brings to life the secret and shadowy world of a charismatic and dangerous cult leader who manipulated everyone into believing he was the Archangel Gabriel and of the deadly consequences of vulnerable people who were sucked in by his twisted theology.

Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish I have no hesitation in making The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels my Featured Book of the Month in February.

About the Author

Janice Hallett studied English at UCL, and spent several years as a magazine editor, winning two awards for journalism. After gaining an MA in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, she co-wrote the feature film Retreat. The Appeal is inspired by her lifelong interest in amateur dramatics. Her second novel, The Twyford Code, is published by Viper in 2022. When not indulging her passion for global adventure travel, she is based in West London.

Twitter @JaniceHallett #TheAlpertonAngels

@ViperBooks

📖 Featured Book of the Month ~ The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

  

Viper 
13 January 2022

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

It's time to solve the murder of the century...

Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. He took it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Isles, who became convinced it was the key to solving a puzzle. That a message in secret code ran through all Edith Twyford's novels. Then Miss Isles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven's memory won't allow him to remember what happened. Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Isles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Isles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it.

📖My review ...

This time last year I was blown away by the strength of this author's debut novel, The Appeal, which went on to win praise all around the book world. It was with some trepidation that I started The Twyford Code, I so didn't want to be disappointed by a second book which didn't quite match the delight of the first. I needn't have worried, for as soon as I began this clever murder/mystery, I realised that this author could, quite literally, hold my attention from the opening sentence. The clever way the book is constructed is what makes this story so special.

The plot centres around the mysterious disappearance, some forty years ago, of a much loved school teacher who went missing on a school trip with a group of her students. That this disappearance is bound up with a mysterious code, which, may, or may not be, connected with the novels of a very famous children's author, is what makes the story all the more fascinating. Steven Smith, now an adult, is determined to visit the places of his childhood, and in doing so the pieces of this complicated puzzle starts to pull together.

This is such a sophisticated novel, not one to read quickly, but more to savour slowly in order to appreciate the skill in which the author manipulates the challenges of the plot, the clever dialogue and the strength of the mystery which continues right until the end. I didn't see anything coming and that's why I am delighted to have this fascinating novel as my Featured Book of the Month in February. 

Best read with...a pint of beer and one eye on the door.

About the Author

Janice Hallett studied English at UCL, and spent several years as a magazine editor, winning two awards for journalism. After gaining an MA in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, she co-wrote the feature film Retreat. The Appeal is inspired by her lifelong interest in amateur dramatics. Her second novel, The Twyford Code, is published by Viper in 2022. When not indulging her passion for global adventure travel, she is based in West London.

Twitter @JaniceHallett @TheTwyfordCode

@ViperBooks

📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ The Plague Letters by V L Valentine

Viper
Serpent's Tail
1 April 2021

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

WHAT IS ONE MORE CORPSE, WHEN ALL AROUND YOU ARE DYING...

London, 1665. Hidden within a growing pile of corpses, one victim of the pestilence stands out: a young woman with a shorn head and pieces of twine delicately tied around each ankle.

Symon Patrick, rector of St. Paul's Covent Garden, cannot say exactly why this corpse amongst the many in his churchyard should give him pause. Longing to do good, he joins a group of medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague, each man more peculiar and splenetic than the next. But there is another - unknown to The Society for the Prevention and Cure of Plague - who is performing his own terrible experiments upon unwilling plague-ridden subjects.

It is Penelope - Symon's unwanted yet unremovable addition to his household - who may yet shed light on the matter. Far more than what she appears, she is already on the hunt. But the dark presence that enters the houses of the sick will not stop, and has no mercy.

📖 My thoughts...

There is something inherently evil lurking in the streets of London in 1665 which is hiding in plain sight of the plague victims who are unceremoniously thrown into stinking lime pits. Mutilated corpses who bear signs of the deadly disease, along with other mysterious desecrations, are brought to the attention of Symon Patrick, the rector of St.Paul’s Covent Garden, whose conscience is stricken at the sight of these poor unfortunate souls.

With the plague spreading at an alarming rate there is little anyone can do to halt its progress but the author shares a fascinating insight into some of the attempted cures which stop nothing short of eye of newt and toe of frog. Joining together with a group of medical men who seek to find a cure for the pestilence, Symon is inadvertently drawn into the deadly race to find a solution. 

The Plague Letters is a decidedly complex crime mystery which brings this time of deadly virus to brisk awareness. There much to take in, both in terms of understanding the terror of this deadly disease which is sweeping through London with unrelenting mercy, and the need for some sort of resolution on behalf of those unfortunate souls who find themselves victims of a depraved killer. The complicated plot, at the centre of the story, namely finding the serial killer, is helped enormously by the addition of Penelope, a strong female protagonist, who arrives from nowhere, and who, very quickly, becomes part of Symon’s unusual household, and is a great help in the quest for the killer.

There were times when I found the plot a little over complicated and there’s an abundance of characters who are, in the main, quite an odd bunch, some more likeable than others, and one or two who you really wouldn’t want to meet in a plague ridden alley way. Having said that, the story is well researched and gives an atmospheric and rather gritty look at this plague-ridden time in our history.

About the Author

V.L. Valentine is a senior science editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where she has led award-winning coverage of global disease outbreaks including Ebola and the Zika virus. She has a master's in the history of medicine from University College London and her non-fiction work has been published by NPR, The New York Times, The Smithsonian Channel and Science Magazine. The Plague Letters is her first novel.

Twitter @valentinevikki #ThePlagueLetters

@ViperBooks

📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ Call Me Mummy by Tina Baker

 

Viper
25 February 2021

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

THIS MOTHER'S DAY YOU WILL CALL HER MUMMY

Glamorous, beautiful Mummy has everything a woman could want... except for a daughter of her very own. So when she sees Kim - heavily pregnant, glued to her phone and ignoring her eldest child in a busy shop - she does what anyone would do. She takes her. But little foul-mouthed Tonya is not the daughter that Mummy was hoping for.

Meanwhile Kim is demonised by the media as a 'scummy mummy', who deserved to lose Tonya and ought to have her other children taken too. Haunted by memories of her own childhood and refusing to play by the media's rules, she begins to spiral, turning on those who love her.

Though they are worlds apart, Mummy and Kim have more in common than they could possibly imagine. But it is five-year-old Tonya who is caught in the middle...

CALL ME MUMMY. IT'LL BE BETTER IF YOU DO

📖 My Thoughts..

I was so excited when, just before Christmas, I won a copy of this book in a Twitter competition. I couldn't wait to start reading it and then once I started reading I couldn't stop, devouring the story in the space of an afternoon and evening, and as the winter shadows lengthened so the story got darker and darker.

Losing your child in a crowded store is every parents worst nightmare, in fact losing anyone's child is definitely not good for the blood pressure. With realisation comes a terrible sinking feeling of panic which makes you want to stop breathing and there's an overwhelming sense of this can’t be happening, and yet for heavily pregnant Kim, misplacing her five-year old daughter, Tonya, is about to become a desperate reality and the starkness of the situation is tempered only by the kidnapper's cool, calm and deadly focus.

Call Me Mummy plunges us headlong into a terrifying roller coaster of unnatural obsession and the character, known only as mummy, is quite possibly the most singularly evil piece of work I have met in fiction for a long time. She made my flesh creep and my pulse race and every time mummy appeared on the page I wondered just what this clever author would have her do next.

Five year old Tonya, mouth like a sewer, made my arms ache to hold her tight. She's a feisty wee baggage that's for sure, but gradually as this sinister story unfolds we see changes in her which make you want to weep. I didn't expect to have as much sympathy for Kim as I did, after all, it was her indifferent carelessness which lost Tonya in the first place, and yet for all her faults, and she has more than a few, Kim is just trying her shabby best to survive in a world which is often as harsh and uncaring as the trolls who lambaste her on social media. 

There's a clever ease to the writing, which probably takes an age to get right, but when it's done so beautifully, as in Call Me Mummy, it feels like you are just sitting having a natter with the author as she recounts a newsworthy story she's seen on TV that day.  Whichever way you look at it though this is a harsh story, its content is visceral and edgy, with clever dialogue and wonderfully flawed characters, and even though the story scared me half to death I just wanted it to go on until it reached its inevitable conclusion.

I read so many books in this genre that sometimes I've worked out the plot long before the wrapping up process starts and yet I really didn't see where Call Me Mummy was heading. I hung onto every well written word, clung to every bit of light relief which the author scatters like gems and throughout the whole of this dark and dangerously addictive story I had the distinct and clever voice of this talented author telling me a story I won't forget for a very long time.

About the Author

Tina Baker, the daughter of a window cleaner and fairground traveller, worked as a journalist and broadcaster for thirty years and is probably best known as a television critic for the BBC and GMTV. After so many hours watching soaps gave her a widescreen bum, she got off it and won Celebrity Fit Club. She now avoids writing-induced DVT by working as a Fitness Instructor.

Call Me Mummy is Tina's first novel, inspired by her own unsuccessful attempts to become a mother. Despite the grief of that, she's not stolen a child - so far. But she does rescue cats, whether they want to be rescued or not.

Twitter @tinabakerbooks #CallMeMummy

Website Blog

@ViperBooks