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The Twyford Code: Winner of the Crime and Thriller British Book of the Year

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But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code holds a great secret, and Smithy may just have the key. 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, which had been left behind on a bus he was riding. The ending changed tone because you are listening instead to Stephen’s Son who is a professor and has received the files from a police officer. (It does state this at the beginning just after the encrypted dedication.) I found the format for The Twyford Code challenging. The story was compiled from transcripts of voice recordings made on an iPhone 4. Some words and phrases were misheard/ altered phonetically, leading to some quirky spelling and parts of sentences lost from the recording. Adding to the difficulty in deciphering errors in the transcriptions, the voices of people speaking are identified only by number. It takes a while to resolve who is included and speaking in those files. There is humour in vague references and mistakes in transcribing the spoken word. The book is told through the 200 transcripts of audio files, recovered from an IPhone 4 and deciphered by a high speed transcription software. Each transcript is a conversation between one to three characters and a key is included to help make sense of words or phrases that may have been misheard. Example: Miss Isles was deciphered as MISSLES.

Nevertheless, due to the interest that Steven and the other four students in her remedial English class showed in studying a banned book, Miss Isles dedicated some lesson time to reading passages from Six on Goldtop Hill, and here Hallett delivers some delightfully funny pastiches of the most sexist aspects of Enid Blyton’s oeuvre. It turned out that Miss Isles was actually quite the expert on Twyford, particularly the conspiracy theory that alleged the writer had used her books to send secret coded messages to the enemy during World War II. We all remember things in our own way, she smiles, and we’re all correct…it’s emotional truth that matters. I noted that I gave the author top marks for thinking outside the box and getting super creative with her format, but that the story itself was just average for me. It was solid, but it wasn't great. The Twyford Code turned my brain inside out. It totally foxed me. So clever and totally brilliant' - Lisa Hall, author of The Party The Twyford Code is a tour de force.... a mind-bending, heartwarming mystery that is not to be missed." - The Observer (UK)Oh dear…It isn’t often I don’t finish a book but I seriously debated whether to persevere with this one. I did finish it though and in hindsight wish I had just DNF’d it. I was looking forward to reading it as The Appeal was a genuinely fun read, but I found this annoying and to be honest, tedious. The Twyford Code is out in January. It’s about a former prisoner who, at the behest of his probation officer and to occupy his time now he is going straight, looks into an episode from his childhood where his English teacher took his remedial English class out for the day and then disappeared. The Appeal is an ensemble piece; The Twyford Code is one character’s personal journey. And I’m working on a third book for 2023 and have a deal for another two novels.

I particularly loved trekking round Madagascar. I went there for the wild life – there are lemurs you can’t see anywhere else on earth and crazy-looking giraffe weevils – but it was the people that most enthralled me. I found it such an education. A superb mystery with true heart at its centre. No one does twists quite like Janice Hallett' - Sophie Flynn, author of All My Lies Recommended for the intricate plotting tied together in an amazing conclusion. The author has proven that she can devise intriguing puzzles in original formats. This is a book I will reread in the future for a better understanding of how the author fits the clues together. Forty years ago, Steven "Smithy" Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. When he showed it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford's novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right. Dad worked in a video shop. It might sound archaic, but videos were like the mobile phones of the 80s and 90s. He considered himself a bit of a yuppy. Mum worked in an office for the gas board.

If you like the sound of The Twyford Code, you might also enjoy Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice or one of the Six Stories novels by Matt Wesolowski. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, I had 48-minutes of the audio left. I sat on my couch and just listened. A schoolteacher, Miss Iles, vanishes while on a field trip in 1983. Years later, one of her former pupils, Steven, an ex-convict, tries to make sense of her disappearance. This is no straightforward crime caper dredging up an unsolved mystery, however. Instead, Janice Hallett ( The Appeal) cleverly deploys clues in transcriptions of 200 audio files recorded by Steven on his phone. This innovative approach adds heartbreak to the thrill of the chase as he digresses into his life in and out of prison. The Twyford Code is a lot of fun, but Hallett also writes with care and empathy. Is This Love? Once again, there was too much repetition and the rehash/summation at the end was excruciatingly tedious. It felt exactly like Teacher showing us how to solve a math equation and having to show our work. Preserve me from all math professors... Oie!!! ZZZZzzzzzz! That was tough going! When he showed it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford’s novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right.

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