Judith Sullivan is a writer in London, originally from Baltimore. She is working on a crime series set in Paris. Fluent in French, she’s pretty good with English and has conversational Italian and German and 20+ years in Leeds improved her Yorkshire speak.
Hallett’s latest is a happy mix of a traditional Christie-style murder mystery and an ultra-modern riff on the pros and cons of electronic communications. Agatha’s spirit hovers over The Silent Appeal, whose major plot device is an 'amdram' production of Christie’s 1951 play The Hollow.
The Lockwood Fairway Players’ staging of the show is fraught with the usual concerns encountered by a provincial amdram group (funding problems, casting issues, faulty props) further aggravated by sexual and personal tensions among cast and crew members.
Told solely through text messages and emails, Appeal reintroduces readers to the dynamic legal duo of Charlotte Holroyd and Femi Hassan, who ultimately unravel the whats-and-whys of the murder that occurs on The Hollow opening night. Hallett cleverly keeps the victim’s identity under wraps until close to the end (and I was not expecting that character to perish).
The staging involves so many players, so many motives. Chief among the suspects are Isabel (Issy) Beck, a cruel stalker in church-mouse clothing, Nicky-Rose Dearing, a dancer with a sideline in blackmail and drug-dealing, and Kevin MacDonald, the play’s director who imagines himself an undiscovered Sam Mendes. Hallett has done amdram and the authenticity shines.
The epistolary structure means I was confused about the who’s who for 50 pages despite Hallett, in a nod to Golden-Age mysteries, including a dramatis personae at the beginning of the book. Once in the groove, however, I went with the backstage antics laid out in multiple Whatsapps and text messages. Hallett astutely comingles information that is mundane and irrelevant (rides to and from rehearsals, coffee selections) and information that impacts the murder and resolution of that crime.
Running parallel to the 2025 shenanigans are events from a few years previous involving Nicky-Rose and her stint as a dancer/manager on a cruise ship. One passenger on that ill-fated voyage has been missing for a while and Nicky-Rose and a colleague from the cruise line are suspected of doing her in for financial reasons. That investigation, led by police in Barbados, dovetails with events in Lockwood, and wraps up at Appeal’s close. The device works but a word of caution to readers. Check the dates on email sends to keep abreast of which events are Hollow-related and which cruise-related.
Without overt insistence, Hallett in this book scrutinises how the availability of instant and cheap communication tools frames and alters fact-finding. Appeal’s readers are drawn into the tasks of sifting truth and fiction, gleaning motives and casting doubt. That hook brings an immediacy to the book and a sense Hallett is speaking to us direct.
The Silent Appeal is a must for readers nostalgic for Golden Age crime who are also open to new ways of presenting whatdone-and-whodunnit.
