The Twyford Code GIVEAWAY!

Win a copy of The Twyford Code SIGNED BY AUTHOR Janice Hallett!!

The paperback edition of the novel is coming out!!

MY REVIEW

Janice Hallett’s book The Appeal was one of the most talked about novels of 2021 and was the Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year. I bought it but it’s still on my To Be Read pile – oops! So when I heard her new book was out – The Twyford Code – I was determined not to wait so long to read it.

I had read a couple of reviews mentioning the format was a bit difficult to get into, as it’s transcriptions of audio files, but I didn’t find this a problem at all. There’s a very useful guide to it on page one (in the form of a letter) and I loved its idiosyncrasies, how some things were spelt phonetically. I found it made the speaker (Steven Smith) very real and authentic, as well as charming and endearing in the way he says things. I fell in love with it in the first chapter and wanted to keep reading, to see how the story unfolds.

The basic idea of the book is that Steven is recently out of jail and begins thinking about his schooldays. He remembers finding a copy of a book on a bus – by famous author Edith Twyford – and how his remedial English teacher read it to the class, before disappearing on a school trip. He decides to investigate the mystery of what happened to her forty years before.

Steven is an unlikely hero. At first glance, he’s someone you’d probably cross over the road to avoid. He’s homeless on and off, has a dodgy background, swears a lot, drinks, doesn’t wash as much as you’d like him to – yet you’ll love him too. He wants to improve himself, he has a good heart and he cares. I especially enjoyed his scenes in the library and with the staff he meets there.

Then, about a hundred pages before the end, I couldn’t stop reading. Until almost midnight, in fact. But I saved the last ten pages for the morning, because it was needing a lot of concentration and brain power. By this point, my brain was rather frazzled! It was working very hard with this book, wow! It’s a very intelligently written book and to read it, you have to have your wits about you.

I found this book both amazing and frustrating! Janice Hallett is an absolute genius, I have no idea how her brain managed to construct all the pieces of this puzzle – then take them apart and put them back together – but she did it with aplomb! No wonder her first novel did so well, I suspect Janice Hallett’s books are going to be treasured and revered for many decades to come.

GIVEAWAY!!!

You can win a signed copy of The Twyford Code in paperback!

Just leave a comment on this blog to be entered into the draw.

UK ADDRESSES ONLY PLEASE!

CLOSING DATE 20th July 2022