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The one thing I can say about this book before you start is to have patience. There were a couple of times around 40-50% in that I started to glaze over and wonder if powering through would be worth it. When I got to the end I came to the conclusion that it absolutely was worth it. A] wonderful novel, which may start like James Joyce rewriting Agatha Christie with anagrams and acrostics, but ends up being a moving, multistory mystery about the power of books and paternal/parental love." - The Times (UK) And far more importantly, it was a great read! I did miss some of the variety of voices Hallett gave us in The Appeal: the format here obviously centred on Smithy with occasional ‘guest’ voices. However, those guests were lovely, whether they were his former classmates Paul, Donna, Michelle, Nate or the very obliging librarian, Lucy, who helps him with his phone, his housing, his research and becomes embroiled in his quest.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Steve is much more intelligent than he seems. He has come up with a complex plan during his long years in prison. With this being said, I have never read anything like this and I am really looking forward to seeing what Janice Hallett delivers us next! The answer is – for me – not quite. There is so much to love about ‘The Twyford Code’ and I found it compelling and fascinating. However, I think I found it more far-fetched than Hallett’s original book and harder to relax into – it definitely is a challenge to keep up with the plot twists and revelations and I did find myself lost a couple of times. I’d still recommend it highly – get a paper copy, clear the diary and lose yourself in a very clever story! Well that was a bit sneaky and very clever! I really didn’t like her first book and dreaded reading this but I ended up enjoying it a lot. Hallett doesn’t want to tell her stories in the traditional way - the first one was told through a series WhatsApp messages and didn’t work for me, but this story is told as transcripts of recorded voice messages and it works much better.Watching Steven, an ex-con, describe what is basically the plot of the Famous Five is a genuine joy The narrative of Janice Hallett’s The Twyford Code is presented through a series of 200 audio files that have been recovered and deciphered from an iPhone 4 belonging to Steven Smith, an ex-con recently released from prison after being incarcerated for 11 years. The files have been transcribed using specialized software and though the end result isn't quite perfect, it renders the content not too difficult to understand. When I read Janice Hallett's release, The Appeal, in January of 2022, I gave the book a rating of 3.5-stars.
The son pieces together the story from the transcripts bit by bit until you finally understand what has happened. This book uses transcripts of messages recorded by the main protagonist, Steven Smith. He is a man with a shady past who is working to solve a mystery that has haunted him since his schooldays when his teacher, Miss Iles, disappeared on a school trip. The key to uncovering the truth seems to lie with his remedial English class and a children’s novel by now-disgraced writer Edith Twyford that holds a code. As Steven visits the people and places from his past, it becomes obvious that the Twyford Code is bigger than he could have imagined…
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Forty years ago, Steven "Smithy" Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. When he showed it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford's novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right. You must have felt like a detective yourself when planning the plot – your book is so meticulously detailed…
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