The Killer Question by Janice Hallett
Can you answer Sue and Mal’s disappearance? Pull up a barstool and enjoy Hallett’s latest mystery. It’s as twisty as a pretzel with a unique ending.
Almost all the mysteries and thrillers I read are paperbacks and ebooks. Some are advance reader copies (ARCs), some are from the library, some are picked up in charity shops and a few are bought new.
But reading a new, first-edition hardback is a rare treat. It is one of the benefits of attending an author talk though and I’m lucky to live near an independent bookshop that regularly hosts them.
If you’re ever near Holmfirth in West Yorkshire, pop into the Read bookshop. For a small space, it has a huge range of contemporary fiction, non-fiction and a whole room with children’s books too. The shop and its busy programme of events are run by Louise, James and their friendly team of helpers.
A few weeks ago, Read hosted a talk by Janice Hallett about her latest book, The Killer Question*, and her writing career. That’s how I got my hands on the hardback for this review. Having recently finished The Appeal, I was eager to start on the author’s latest release.
The mystery centres around a pub, The Case is Altered, whose landlords, Sue and Mal Eastwood, are missing. The story is told in Hallett’s trademark style, through emails, WhatsApp messages, transcripts and written documents. You get to discover what happened by reading the messages Sue and Mal sent and received before their disappearance.
Along the way, you learn about the pub quiz that the landlords ran, the rivalry between the quiz teams and the suspicious team that starts winning every single quiz.
During the talk at Read, Janice Hallett explained that before writing her novels, she’d spent ten years writing screenplays. That’s why her novels are told entirely through the communications between characters, as it’s like writing dialogue for screenplays.
Sue and Mal are well-drawn characters who you can easily imagine as pub landlords. They’re down-to-earth, humorous and a bit naive. Some of their slightly comical behaviour reminds me of the Nick and Audrey Spitz characters (played by Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) from the Netflix Murder Mystery films.
The quiz teams supply many of the other characters. There are the lycra-clad cyclists, the downbeat Sid (and his wife Nancy), the vegans and, of course, the team that seems able to win every quiz.
Hallett keeps you riveted to the story as it unfolds across three timelines - the present day, what happened before Sue and Mal’s disappearance and their life before they ran the pub.
Given the complex plotting within the story and Hallett’s other novels, I was surprised to learn that she doesn’t plan out her plots before she starts writing. When asked at the Read event how she plans her books, Hallett said she starts with a very basic idea and simply begins writing and sees where it leads.
There are lots of loose threads, but the author draws them all together to explain everything you’ve read. And there are a lot of ingenious twists. While I had a few ideas about what might be happening in the story, the most significant reveal at the end was completely unexpected. It was a brilliant conclusion to the book that underlines the calibre of Hallet’s writing.
Having read a couple of Hallett’s books, I think what makes them stand out is they work on many different levels. The stories are told in the first person, the emails and messages keep you hooked, the characters are so believable, there’s a sprinkle of humour and the mystery itself is well-constructed. You enjoy your journey of reading the story and once you finish, you sit back and admire how impressive it was.
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