Library's review
The legal case is not the only appeal that the title refers to. At the heart of the story is a village community theater group, the Fairway Players, which is run more or less benevolently by the local "alpha" family, the Haywards. They receive shocking news when their young granddaughter, Poppy, is diagnosed with cancer. Her only hope is an experimental drug treatment that has not been approved in the UK and is only available at enormous cost directly from the American doctors conducting a clinical trial. The family launches an ambitious crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds, while simultaneously rehearsing and preparing to debut the theater group's current play, Arthur Miller's All My Sons.
It's pretty clear from the setup and the opening pages that there's something rotten in Lockwood, but we don't find out who the victim is until quite late, which makes reading all of the emails and texts akin to putting together a jigsaw puzzle without being able to refer to the picture on the box. I found it to be a compelling page-turner, and it was enjoyable to continually make and revise guesses about what was really going on, to whom and by whom, throughout. (Let's just say murder isn't the only criminal activity going on among this lot.) The characters were fully formed and distinct enough to both distinguish from each other and allow the reader to form definite opinions about them based on their communications.
All in all, I found this a rollicking good time. Because the story is told in an epistolary style, there's no blood or gore — the focus really is on trying to put the puzzle together and arrive at the same conclusion as the lawyers. The final chapter seemed like the perfect payoff for the setup that occurred throughout the story, which is always a satisfying way to end a mystery.
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INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "[W]itty, original...a delight." --The New York Times Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell, this international bestseller and "dazzlingly clever" (The Sunday Times, London) murder mystery follows a community rallying around a sick child--but when escalating lies lead to a dead body, everyone is a suspect. The Fairway Players, a local theatre group, is in the midst of rehearsals when tragedy strikes the family of director Martin Hayward and his wife Helen, the play's star. Their young granddaughter has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and with an experimental treatment costing a tremendous sum, their castmates rally to raise the money to give her a chance at survival. But not everybody is convinced of the experimental treatment's efficacy--nor of the good intentions of those involved. As tension grows within the community, things come to a shocking head at the explosive dress rehearsal. The next day, a dead body is found, and soon, an arrest is made. In the run-up to the trial, two young lawyers sift through the material--emails, messages, letters--with a growing suspicion that the killer may be hiding in plain sight. The evidence is all there, between the lines, waiting to be uncovered. A wholly modern and gripping take on the epistolary novel, The Appeal is a "daring...clever, and funny" (The Times, London) debut for fans of Richard Osman and Lucy Foley.… (more)