Author: Janice Hallett
Published: January 24, 2023
Format: Kindle, 333 pages
Genre: Fiction
First Sentence: I am investigating a mysterious case and suspect you may be able to help. Let me explain.
Blurb: Steven Smith has just been released from prison, and he is finally free to investigate a mystery that has haunted him since childhood. Forty years ago, he found a copy of a famous children's book, full of strange markings and annotations. He took it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Isles, who became convinced that it was the key to solving a puzzle. That a message in secret code ran through all Edith Twyford's novels. Then Miss Isles disappeared, and Steven's memory won't allow him to remember what happened. Did she sense her own imminent death? Was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Isles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it.
My Opinion: This book is for the armchair treasure hunter and is one of the oddest formatted books I have read in a long while. The novel begins by telling the reader how to read the book since it is made up of notes and conversations recorded on a smartphone app.
The speaker, Steven Smith, an ex-con with a colorful past, is on a mission to remember a teacher who went missing on a school outing and what a series of books has to do with it. But then again -- is it?
Since little is presented at the outset, the reader is just as confused as Steve but knows there must be a part of the story that is being kept from them, either as a purposeful plot twist or memory lapses, which won’t be revealed until the end.
Told backward, sideways, generally all over the place, I would have stopped long ago if I wasn’t as caught up in the Twyford Code as Steve.
By the end, Janice Hallett tells the reader all the parts they missed but might have wondered about. Then as a last jab, there is one final code that I didn’t bother with since I was done with the whole thing.
Blurb: Steven Smith has just been released from prison, and he is finally free to investigate a mystery that has haunted him since childhood. Forty years ago, he found a copy of a famous children's book, full of strange markings and annotations. He took it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Isles, who became convinced that it was the key to solving a puzzle. That a message in secret code ran through all Edith Twyford's novels. Then Miss Isles disappeared, and Steven's memory won't allow him to remember what happened. Did she sense her own imminent death? Was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Isles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it.
My Opinion: This book is for the armchair treasure hunter and is one of the oddest formatted books I have read in a long while. The novel begins by telling the reader how to read the book since it is made up of notes and conversations recorded on a smartphone app.
The speaker, Steven Smith, an ex-con with a colorful past, is on a mission to remember a teacher who went missing on a school outing and what a series of books has to do with it. But then again -- is it?
Since little is presented at the outset, the reader is just as confused as Steve but knows there must be a part of the story that is being kept from them, either as a purposeful plot twist or memory lapses, which won’t be revealed until the end.
Told backward, sideways, generally all over the place, I would have stopped long ago if I wasn’t as caught up in the Twyford Code as Steve.
By the end, Janice Hallett tells the reader all the parts they missed but might have wondered about. Then as a last jab, there is one final code that I didn’t bother with since I was done with the whole thing.
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