The Christmas Appeal: A Novella

by Janice Hallett

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The Christmas Appeal is an amuse-bouche of a novella by the Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick author for 2022’s The Appeal. Let this whet your appetite before The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels.

This immersive holiday caper from the “modern Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times, London) follows the hilarious Fairway Players theater group as they put on a Christmas play—and solve a murder that threatens their production.

The Christmas season has arrived in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive holiday production of Jack and the Beanstalk to raise money for a new church roof. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking among the amateur theater enthusiasts with petty rivalries, a possibly asbestos-filled beanstalk, and some perennially absent players behind the scenes.

Of course, there’s also the matter of the dead body onstage. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they investigate Christmas letters, examine emails, and pore over police transcripts to identify both the victim and killer before the curtain closes on their holiday production—for good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668035887
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	17,736
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Janice Hallett is a former magazine editor, award-winning journalist, and government communications writer. She wrote articles and speeches for, among others, the Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Department for International Development. Her enthusiasm for travel has taken her around the world several times, from Madagascar to the Galapagos, Guatemala to Zimbabwe, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. A playwright and screenwriter, she penned the feminist Shakespearean stage comedy NetherBard and cowrote the feature film Retreat. She lives in London and is the author of The Examiner, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, The Appeal, The Christmas Appeal, and The Twyford Code.

Read an Excerpt

To: Femi Hassan & Charlotte Holroyd
From: Roderick Tanner, KC
Date: November 1, 2023
Subject: A conundrum for you
 
Dear both,
 
I trust you are well.
While you establish yourselves in the field of criminal law, it doesn’t hurt to keep the wheels of deduction turning. I have another fascinating case to run past you. Why you? Well, it seems The Fairway Players are once again at the center of a mystery.
I’ve read the enclosed and think I’ve worked it out. I wonder if you can.
Here is a bundle of correspondence from the last few weeks of 2022, during rehearsals for the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk.
 
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
 
RT
Roderick Tanner, KC (retired)  

Editorial Reviews

10/02/2023

The Fairway Players of England’s Lower Lockwood region see their plans for a fund-raising Christmas production of Jack and the Beanstalk complicated by an unexpected death in Hallett’s lively follow-up to 2022’s The Appeal. The players’ altruistic community project, set to raise funds for a new church roof, is riven by petty jealousies, power plays, hidden agendas, and attempts to sabotage the production, all of which long-suffering director Sarah-Jane MacDonald must contend with, alongside more quotidian concerns, like selling tickets. Then the production’s beanstalk splits on the night of the performance and a dead body dressed in a Santa costume spills out. As in the previous entry in the series, fledgling lawyers Femi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd are assigned to review documents including text messages, emails, and police reports (which make up the bulk of the text) to determine whether foul play was involved, and who might be to blame. The epistolary structure ostensibly provides readers an opportunity to piece the mystery together beside Hassan and Holroyd, though they may be disappointed by a lack of fair-play clues. Still, cozy mystery devotees are likely to enjoy the rollicking ride and look forward to the Players’ next production. Agent: Markus Hoffman, Regal Hoffman & Assoc. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Janice Hallett’s latest witty, effervescent murder mystery brings us back to the world of the Fairway Players in all their dysfunctional glory...The humor is laugh out loud funny throughout this lively, fast-packed book."
—Criminal Element

From the Publisher

Four gifted narrators bring listeners this holiday treat told through emails. A dozen members of the Fairway Players, an English amateur theater group, discuss their upcoming pantomime of "Jack and the Beanstalk." Their emails reveal the essence of each writer--their subtle power grabs, petty jealousies, and barely concealed hatreds. With so many characters, it could have been difficult to identify each speaker. Happily, Aysha Kala, Daniel Philpott, Rachel Adedeji, and Sid Sagar so deftly individualize the dialogue that the production sounds like it has more than four narrators. The story includes a dead body and crime solving, but what's best is its dry humor and wonderfully depicted characters. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile