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Welcome back to Lower Lockwood. The Fairway Players return with Sarah-Jane and Kevin MacDonald as committee cochairs. This year, they have chosen to stage Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. But auditions aren’t their only problem: Sarah-Jane’s sister, Nicky-Rose, is suddenly back in town under mysterious circumstances, having sold her home in Barbados, left her business providing entertainment on cruise ships, and moved back into their mother Carol’s house.
As always, they’re short on men, and new Player Fran Elroy-Jones enlists a young married couple and the husband’s cousin to join. But no one wants to play the part of the hated Gerda, leaving Kevin and Sarah-Jane with no option but to reach out to an old member they know would be happy to perform in any role.
As with any production, tensions run high, and our intrepid lawyers Femi and Charlotte are tasked with uncovering exactly what happened on the opening night of The Hollow—and whether the correct person has taken the blame.
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The new Queen of Crime returns, and so do the Fairway Players in Janice Hallett's brilliant sequel to 2021's The Appeal.A convicted murderer is refusing to appeal their guilty verdict, so Mr Tanner KC enlists the help of Femi and Charlotte to review the case. He clearly thinks there's more to this than the initial evidence suggests.Janice Hallett has to be one of the greatest crime-writers alive today as this is a classic whodunnit told in her signature epistolary (mixed-media) style. I was captivated from the first page and instantly drawn back into the Fairway Players drama group, reading their texts and emails. The story is so fast-paced and because of the format, you're never quite sure if you can trust everything you read.The plot is as intricate as ever, with you having to solve a murder when you don't even know who's been killed until near the end. Yet all of the clues are there if you look closely, though Charlotte and Femi pop up every now and then with a helpful summary of the evidence as they see it.This is an absolute triumph in storytelling and so hard to put down. I found myself regularly laughing out loud and then holding my head in my hands in despair at the characters' interactions. I highly recommend reading The Appeal first—simply because it's fantastic—but you really don't need to in order to enjoy this one, as there are no major spoilers or heavy references to the first book. You'll just love and understand the characters all the more. #IssyFanclub I would like to convey my thanks to Netgalley and Serpent's Tail/Viper Books for the chance to review this novel. All opinions are my own.The Silent Appeal is due to be released on 3rd September 2026.