The Appeal has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be put forward for bookclub, so I have not read it yet. That makes The Twyford Code, Janice Hallett's second outting, the first novel of her creation I've enjoyed. I loved it! So inventive and fresh, far more complex than it's simple premise would lead you to believe.

Steven Smith is a real dark horse in this novel and a strangely likeable chap. Enduring a rough childhood, getting in with the wrong crowd and ending up in prison, he's more an antihero than anything but the reader warms to him in time and wants him to succeed in his quest for answers regarding the teacher, Miss Isles, who disappeared from his life after an unorthodox school road trip. Why can't he remember what happened and how does children's author Edith Twyford and her mysterious code play a role? To be fair, I don't want to say anything else beyond this for fear of tripping up and giving the game away.

The complexity is rather mind boggling and delightful to unravel. Ingenious and fun, I didn't see the twists and so enjoyed my time in Steven Smith's world. A mystery reader's dream, this.

I loved The Appeal but its unusual structure made me fear that Janice Hallett might turn out to be a one trick pony. I should have had more faith. I think the Twyford Code is actually a step up. I thought after a few (digital) pages that the transcription format - the novel is narrated via a series of computer-generated transcirptions full of quirky mishearings - would get annoying. It never did. It was a wonderful read. Bravo.

This story is told from the point of view of Steven Smith, a career criminal recently released from prison, who wishes to connect with his estranged son. He is barely literate so is recording his thoughts and experiences on an old IPhone.
He mentions several times the fact that the phone is so old and he is so technically inept that he can’t even playback the recordings. They are an unedited record.
We understand from the narrative that the story is a transcript of these recordings sent to his son at some point after the recordings have been made.

The story Steve tells his son is not a family history but a recounting of his efforts to discover what happened to his school teacher who mysteriously disappeared on a trip to Bournemouth. He is convinced that in order to solve this mystery he must decipher The Twyford Code and to assist him in his investigations he enlists the help of the local librarian Lucy, and the four other members of his class who took part in the trip to Bournemouth.

Mostly the author overcomes the inherent drawback of a second-hand, diary-style, retelling of events by having Steve record phone calls, conversations and other real-time interactions.
In fact, she utilizes this ‘blind eaves-dropping’ to create tension: we aren’t always sure what is going on.
The transcriptions also allows a certain authenticity as Steve is constantly swearing but as this is automatically censored it does not overwhelm the text.
In addition, the transcriptions add a touch of humour due to the misidentification of certain words. When these are combined with those words that the app is not able to transcribe the reader feels drawn into the deciphering game.

The code is based on a book written by a fictitious author Edith Twyford who, at least in the beginning, evokes comparisons to Enid Blyton, a joy for a childhood Blyton fan like me. (Later on the book quotes from Twyford’s 'novels'. They are so truly awful I assume it is meant as parody, I hope the author never encountered real children's books with such vicious content.)
While following on the trail of the code we encounter Maeve and Lionel, a couple still searching for The Golden Hare, which engendered a wave of nostalgia as I remembered my childhood wonder at the fabulous illustrations in Masquerade.
Steve also makes reference to scenes from Lord of the Flies, a book he read while still in jail.
These are references calculated to elicit a reaction from readers of a certain age but are possibly subtle red herrings set to distract our attention.

This was exciting, a page-turner even though after a while I began to suspect the true story.
The ending should have been stunning, leaving you pondering what had happened for days after closing the book.
It was a brilliant idea but the author didn’t find a way of successfully transferring it to the page.
The original format that worked so well for the main part of the narrative stifled the ending. It turned a jaw-droopingly ingenious revelation into a mind-numbing info dump.
For me it turned 5 stars into 4.

An epistolary mystery told mostly through voice recordings on an iPhone 4, the Twyford Code follows Steven Smith as he attempts to decode the clues many believe are throughout the books of Edith Twyford as he believes it is tied to the disappearance of his school teacher when he was a child.

I love a good epistolary novel, but it did take me a while to get into this one. I couldn’t really get into the narrative and the protagonist wasn’t that interesting to me unformatunely.

I did get a little confused as the characters got more into the code and the mystery of the Twyford books.

However, I loved the techniques employed by the writer such as purposefully misspelling words as the recordings have been transcribed by a machine.

I think this might be one of those times where I need to reread to fully appreciate what is happening, but for now three stars.

Thank you to Netgalley for a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Steve ‘Smithy’ Smith is recently released from prison. Divorced and estranged from his adult son, he decides to solve a mystery from his youth - whatever happened to his school teacher who disappeared on a school trip.
This adventure will lead him to the mysterious Twyford Code; a secret code placed in children’s books, a code that his teacher was trying to solve herself.

This is a very cleverly written story. At first I was a little put off by the way it’s told in voice recordings. But, it grabs you, and as you read you begin to learn more about the tragic life of Smithy, what led him to be put in prison and his terrible upbringing.

Some fantastic twists and turns lead to the conclusion, a great story.

I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

‘The Twyford Code’ is for its time (right now!) quite an unusual book. It has more in common with ‘Golden Age’ crime writing than anything more modern such as the obvious comparison of ‘The Da Vinci Code’. With the basis of the book being the exploration of what is possibly a code which may point to a treasure or a terrible secret, it is not surprising to find it is full of codes and hints and clues and red herrings and half-truths and outright lies enough to satisfy the most ardent of Classic Crime puzzle fans, of which I am one.
But it is a little bit more than that in that it is composed in a very modern way. There have been many novels written in the first person or diary format which can be very affecting and intriguing but in a thriller this can tend to fall down at a number of points in the action. For example, and to name no names, it is hard to believe in the diarist locking themselves in a room, frantically scribbling down their thoughts whilst the ‘bad guy’ breaks down the door… ‘The Twyford Code’ gets around this in a very clever and believable way, utilising contemporary technology to create a conceit of a diary format (vital to the plot) to be presented in a way that holds up entirely to the end of the novel.

The novel doesn’t just tell you the story, the reader is carried along with the story, desperately trying to follow and crack the codes and puzzles which form the story but also looking out for other hidden clues and puzzles which may reveal the whole story. To repeat, this really is not ‘The ‘Da Vinci Code’!
But it is not just about the puzzles; this is a great thriller which doesn’t let up from the start and has a complex backstory revealed throughout. And it is funny – not full of jokes but there is a lot of humour all the way through the book.
This novel is going to get compared to Richard Osman and any number of current ‘light’ crime novelists, because that is the way the publishing industry works, but honestly, and without denigrating its competition, it is a good step or two above the rest.

Another twisty turny tale from the bestselling author of The Appeal. It wasnt as much fun as that previous novel, and the format was a little harder to get to grips with but very enjoyable.

When he was a child, Steven Smith found a children’s book discarded on a bus. After showing the book to his teacher Miss Iles, she tells her class the story of the disgraced author Edith Twyford. The group become obsessed with the book, (and the strange symbols and annotations scribbled throughout the pages), leading to the fateful day when Miss Iles goes missing after a class trip.

Forty years later, Steven is determined to find out what really happened, but the path he is following is a dangerous one, and there are other people involved who want the past to stay buried.

If there was ever a book that made me want to jump into the pages and help to solve the mystery, it’s this one. Unbelievably clever, the most intricate and complex plotting with so many hidden clues all coming together like a magician revealing the secrets behind an impossible trick, it was so satisfying to read as everything began to fall into place.

After reading the synopsis I thought The Twyford Code was going to be a quaint and quirky mystery, but running alongside the decades old conundrum was a story about loyalty, a story about family, and a story about resilience which was unexpected and truly heartwarming.

Getting to the end of the story and actually spotting an acrostic in the text made me feel like I had single-handedly solved the Twyford Code. This little nod to the reader, made me feel like I was part of the gang and was the perfect way to finish such an immersive and satisfying mystery.

The Twyford Code was reminiscent of the children’s mystery stories I used to read when I was younger…and of the classic mysteries I loved as I was growing up…and of the mystery and thriller books I love to read now…but somehow it was still a story told with a completely unique voice and style. A thrill and a pleasure to read.

This time last year I was blown away by the strength of this author's debut novel, The Appeal, which went on to win praise all around the book world. It was with some trepidation that I started The Twyford Code, I so didn't want to be disappointed by a second book which didn't quite match the delight of the first. I needn't have worried, for as soon as I began this clever murder/mystery, I realised that this author could, quite literally, hold my attention from the opening sentence. The clever way the book is constructed is what makes this story so special.

The plot centres around the mysterious disappearance, some forty years ago, of a much loved school teacher who went missing on a school trip with a group of her students. That this disappearance is bound up with a mysterious code, which, may, or may not be, connected with the novels of a very famous children's author, is what makes the story all the more fascinating. Steven Smith, now an adult, is determined to visit the places of his childhood, and in doing so the pieces of this complicated puzzle starts to pull together.

This is such a sophisticated novel, not one to read quickly, but more to savour slowly in order to appreciate the skill in which the author manipulates the challenges of the plot, the clever dialogue and the strength of the mystery which continues right until the end. I didn't see anything coming and that's why I am delighted to have this fascinating novel as my Featured Book of the Month in February.

This book is set in the format of automatic transcripts of recorded voice messages on an I Phone4 this means that sometimes you have to read phonetically to get the original meaning.
This did take me a while to get used to and I found I needs to read slower than usual to get full understanding.
I found this a very enjoyable read and stayed up late engrossed in it.
This was definitely an original read and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.
Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for this read.

A fantastic read. The writing style is unique in that is it a series of transcripts taken from recovered audio files, so quite often words are misspelled as they phonetically sound out words and phrases. The plot revolves around Steven Smith, who on release from prison, decides to track down some old school friends in a bid to their favourite teacher Miss Isles, who went mysteriously missing after a school trip , which was connected to a hidden code found in one of Edith Twyford's books (based on Enid Blyton). It becomes a treasure hunt, but someone isn't happy with their trail. Smithy is aided by a kindly librarian helping him to crack the code. All is not what it seems, of course, and people are not exactly as we believe them to be. An intelligent and fun read I adored the final paragraph which holds a code for the reader. A must read for 2022! #thetwyfordcode #janicehallett #netgalley

Steven Smith has recently been released from prison and determined to stay straight. Though he is determined to crack the code of what happened to his old teacher, Miss Isles, who went missing on a school trip. Steven has no memory of what happened, except that his teacher was obsessed with cracking a secret code in an old Edith Twyford children's book that Steven found on a bus one day. Armed with just his son's old iPhone, Steven starts to track down old classmates and revisit old haunts to try crack the mystery of Miss Isles and the Twyford Code.

After reading The Appeal by Janice Hallett, I was excited to get my hands on this. The Appeal is a novel presented in various emails and text formats, trying to crack a legal case. In this novel, Steven Smith uses the iPhone to record voice notes and this book is presented as a transcription of the voice note. At the beginning there is a guide to the voice-to-text software that was used to transcribe the voice notes, which has its own guide to how things like breathing and swearing is presented in the transcriptions. It does take a bit to get used to, especially because the the transcription is often wrong, usually down to how a character pronounces something. For example, Miss Isles is presented as 'missiles'.

The book has a few mysteries. We're trying to work out what happened to the teacher, but also what the Twyford Code. There's a lot of layers to this, as Steven starts looking into the author Edith Tywford, who wrote some of the books during World War II. I thought at times there was just a bit too much detail for these sections, I feel like one layer of this element could have been omitted and the story would have been a bit clearer but no less mysterious. I did like the plot overall, as well as Steven updating the current timeline with his investigation, he is also telling his life story, up to the point where he goes to prison. Which was done well but a bit long at times.

I do think reading this as an ebook wasn't the best experience for me. Part of what I liked about The Appeal was being able to go back and check something from earlier in the book if I had a suspicion. Which is a lot harder to do in the ebook. I think as well because this was an ARC, the layout and formatting isn't as polished as the finished ebook so I think this may have added to my enjoyment not being on par as The Appeal

Overall though, I did enjoy the story, I loved the format and how the story comes together in the end. And I look forward to what the author has to offer next!

Steven Smith, as a young boy in his remedial English class, gave his teacher a copy of a book he had found on the bus – a children’s book by Edith Twyford, a children’s author who had fallen from grace due to her outdated values. The book’s margins were full of strange markings and notes, but his teacher, Miss Iles became obsessed with it. Soon after, she took Steven and his four classmates on a trip to the author’s home – but Miss Iles never returned and Steven has no memory of the end of the trip…

Many years later, and Steven is out of prison after a long sentence. He becomes determined to finally discover the truth about Miss Iles’ fate. She had been convinced that there was a complex code woven throughout Twyford’s books, the so-called Twyford Code, and she was, apparently, not the only one who believes in the code’s existence. But where does the code lead? What treasures does it hide? And why are people apparently willing to kill to keep it a secret?

And the winner for the most difficult book to review without spoiling it goes to…

OK, so let’s take the set-up first of all. This one, Hallett’s second book following the brilliant The Appeal, is presented as a sequence of automated transcriptions of audio files found on the mobile phone that belonged to someone who has gone missing. They have been sent to a university professor for their opinion, but there is a bit of a catch, because as the audio files have been automatically transcribed, there are some mild errors in the text – “missiles” for example rather than “Miss Iles”.

As the transcripts go on – initially Steven’s audio diaries, both on the present, the events when “missiles” disappeared and his more recent past in the criminal fraternity, and then, once he works out how to record conversations, some… well, conversations – it becomes clear that perhaps there is more going on than the reader initially imagined.

That’s probably all I can say about the plot, so let me make one thing clear before I have a bit of a moan – this is an outstanding piece of work. I was carrying it around, couldn’t put it down. It absolutely gripped me from beginning to end, and while I twigged where it was going – more in a “I can’t believe that this is possible but…” way that a rational razor-sharp deduction, that didn’t stop me being impressed by it.

The problem is that it’s too clever, really. If the reader is going to crack the Twyford Code – and I’m sure that some readers would want to sit down and devour it a la Masquerade, for example – then it really needed a “Challenge To The Reader” or some such interruption or warning. Once we get to the final section, I felt there was a little bit of an information dump. I wonder – did the author initially want to keep the detail revealed in the finale quiet for the dedicated codebreaker to try and solve, because I think that would have worked. The finale still works if the detail is kept nebulous, I think, and we would have had a puzzle that people might have been speculating about for a good while. The puzzle is deeply impressive how it is all put together, but more time pondering it – for some readers at least – might have been appreciated.

Regardless, this is a great read, although I think putting “The Modern Agatha Christie” on the front of this one (as opposed to on the front of The Appeal) might leave some people confused, as this is far, far from Dame Agatha. Still damn clever though.

Janice Hallett's second book offers another (quite different) innovative way of presenting a mystery story. Much of the text is a digital transcription of a number of audio files, apparently found on the mobile phone of a missing ex-convict. This automated digitisation process is not perfect, and results in a writing style which has the effect of emphasising the educational background and underprivileged upbringing of the narrator. Indeed a lot of the story stems from his attempts to unravel a mysterious and somewhat traumatic and imperfectly recalled event from his schooldays. The "code" of the title is (possibly) embedded in some books for children written in the 1940s by a prolific authoress now out of favour due to her mainly sexist and racist attitudes - sound familiar? I loved it. We are treated to short excerpts of Enid Blyton pastiche - clearly great fun for Hallett to write - and the protagonist, Steven, as a relatively newly-literate adult, seems to find the stories as compelling as most juniors did in their era. For myself, I was totally hooked as Steven unravelled the mystery, if not partly because the plot was (fully intentionally I believe) not without some similarities to those children's adventure yarns of old. The episodic nature of the "files", plus the constant fear for Steven's safety, made the book hard to put down.
However, the above only describes some elements of what made the book appeal so much to me - for the rest, you will have to read it yourself. Overall, the story is a contemporary thriller completely grounded in a gritty reality, and has the most wonderful twist of a conclusion, which moves us far beyond childhood nostalgia and the Famous Five.

What a clever and novel tale this was! This story is recorded on Steven Smith's son's iphone as Steven is not a good reader and does not write. There is much humour and need for concentration reading this story as many words are misconstrued (for example missiles instead of Miss Iles; or day (shoes) for audacious; crosses and ticks for acrostics). This is a complicated puzzle which the reader can also attempt to solve.
The real joy of this story, for me, is Steven himself. He had a very sad upbringing, got involved with the wrong people but is a lovely man who I so loved and wanted to see him succeed in his journey.
Solid 4 stars!
Many thanks to Netgalley/Janice Hallett/Viper Books for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

I enjoyed The Appeal and was unsure if the next outing by the author would be as good, and i am pleased to say it was. This is another good book and i would definitely recommend it.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it really wasnt for me, thanks for the opportunity to read this book, will not give low stars as its not the authors fault i didn't enjoy it as what I did read was well written.

A recently released prisoner wants to solve what happened to his p[rimary school teacher who mysteriously vanished after reading his class a book. This sets recently literate Steve on a mission to solve the Twyford code and unravel his past.
There are many twists and turns in this book as he finds a code in the books of a children's author.
My colleague at Waterstones kept drip feeding me clues as I reached the end but none made any sense.

If you like working out clues for yourself and think you can spot a "shoal" off red herrings, then this is the book for you.
Just when you think you've "got it" there's another twist and these weren't predictable unless you are an extremely attentive reader. Try it for yourself...
Great plot and themes of childhood, nature/nurture and memory.

There’s just something about Janice Hallett’s writing - she really knows how to write an incredibly intriguing mystery and always in such a unique way. This book is told throughout dictated voice notes, which is definitely something I’ve never read. As a result, some things are spelt wrong, or wrongly interpreted which just adds to the mystery. Is the speaker lying or have things simply been interpreted wrong. It’s definitely an interesting layer to the story.

I loved the layout of this book at the start, it was so different to anything I’ve ever read and I love the idea of having to read between the lines to figure out exactly what’s going on and to avoid the deception of the main character, trying to discern what is truth and what could potentially be lies.

That being said, this writing style got a bit old and repetitive and I found myself just feeling a bit confused and bored. It felt like there were too many mysteries going on and as a result I wasn’t necessarily interested in finding out the results of them. I did have to force myself through the middle section of this book, but it definitely picked up again at the ending.

I did enjoy this book. There were definitely a number of shocking twists throughout that I didn't see coming and it is a very unique story, just a bit confusing and repetitive at times. The ending was quite satisfying, and I’d started to predict it but I’d have liked more clues throughout! It was so cleverly written and I'm surprised that I didn't figure it all out sooner, I just feel like the stories felt so disjointed even though they were all necessary for the final plot reveals, which were definitely fun and made up for some of the confusion throughout!

If you liked The Appeal then I’d still give this one a go! I think it would make an excellent audiobook so I would maybe try it that way.

I loved this, I loved the plot and the characters! I was immediately drawn to this book after reading the appeal last year by the same author and I was absolutely not disappointed.