The Appeal: The smash-hit bestseller

Product Information

Did I really need to know about Issy having bought a new yoga mat at a sale and she could get one for Sam if she wanted? They often speak volumes, and the reader is advised to note who doesn’t speak, as well as who does and what they say. There's reason to believe that the incarcerated person is actually innocent, however, but if they are, who is the murderer?

One of my suspicions was proven correct but there were other little and some bigger surprises along the way making my reading experience a worthwhile one. In the last quarter of the book Femi and Charlotte help us out with a review of what they’ve learned which is so useful not least because they’re are a lot of characters to get your head around! Thanks to the vast amount of details and the number of characters hiding secrets and lies, I was thoroughly unsuccessful. Even when I found out who was murdered, I wasn't particularly bothered by it, or really compelled to discover who did it.A local theatre group, The Fairway Players, are getting ready for Arthur Miller’s play, All My Sons, when tragedy strikes the family of Martin Hayward, the director, and his wife, Helen, the play’s star. They intertwine, but I was too distracted for the brain power needed (perhaps December was the wrong month for this one)!

The founders of the group are Martin Haywood and his wife, Helen who also own and operate The Grange Golf and Country Club.

This is a thoroughly entertaining whodunnit with a cozy murder mystery feel and clever little clues which I didn’t actually pick up on until towards the end. A community theatre troupe, led by Martin and wife Helen, are brought together by something other than the love of the stage when Martin and Helen's young daughter Poppy falls ill. The story centres around 2 major plot lines - one is the local amateur drama society and their upcoming production (you wouldn’t believe all the drama - pun intended) and the other is a fund raising appeal to help pay for expensive experimental treatment for a 2 year old girl with a brain tumour.

The couple owns the Grange Golf and Country Club and are instrumental in forming the Fairway Players, an amateur drama society. Needless to say, I can’t say much or it would surely give it all away, but just know that some quirks and character flaws served double duty more than once. All said and done, I loved feeling like a fly on the wall throughout this sordid and mysterious tale.However, I did appreciate the epistolary format of the novel, the murder mystery at the core and the humor. Their daughter, Paige is married to Glen, with a 2 year old daughter Poppy, and their son, James, is married to the pregnant Olivia. While I think this novel could shed a few pages, my interest never waned, and I needed to find out what was going on. And as he prepares for the appeal, he presents two of his star pupils with additional written evidence that came to light after the trial and the guilty verdict.

Later he shares correspondence and other documents pertaining to the case based on which Femi and Charlotte chalk out and analyze probable scenarios that could have possibly led to the murder.Letters also form a third of the narrative in Macdonald’s The Crime Conductor (1931) and there are the crime dossiers constructed by Dennis Wheatley.