There is nothing more satisfying that a good ‘whodunnit.’ Examining clues, finding suspects and determining motivations is all part of the fun of a good murder mystery.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett offers an unconventional take on the traditional murder mystery format. It is an epistolary novel, written as a series of emails rather than in traditional prose. The story begins with two junior lawyers that have been handed a file folder full of emails obtained by the police department. The messages are between all fifteen suspects in a murder case. As the reader, you are seeing these emails in real time along with the lawyers. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary. A group of people are putting on an amateur theatre production of All My Sons. The play is run by a well-to-do couple of high social standing. Some of the cast members are new to town and some have been there for years. Shortly after rehearsals begin, the play runner makes a plea to the community: his two-year-old granddaughter is fighting a rare form of brain cancer and the best chance she has for recovery is an experimental drug that costs $350,000. The email exchanges that follow are littered with clues suggesting something else is going on.

I will tell you right now – you will either devour every word of this book or toss it aside in frustration. There are a lot of characters involved and it can be overwhelming at the start. As the story goes on, however, it becomes clearer who is who and how they are related.

What I loved about this book was how much there was to examine with each email. The time the message was sent, who replies, and the time between responses all became clues. It was like putting a jigsaw puzzle together – each tiny piece added to the bigger picture. The same character may tell completely conflicting stories depending on who they were emailing. A new piece of information would appear and make earlier, seemingly benign emails seem suspicious. I was often flipping back to earlier pages to see how the emails read when put in a different context. It does take a while for the actual murder to occur, but it is the lead up to the crime that is more important than the murder itself. The clues to who did it are already there long before the body is ever discovered.

Every few chapters the two junior lawyers pop up in the form of texts. They serve as the ‘detective’ found in traditional mysteries, dissecting what’s happened so far. Sometimes they missed clues that I picked up on and sometimes they highlighted clues that I missed.

I won’t give anything away, but the ending turns out to be much more than finding out ‘whodunnit.’ There are plenty of questions to unravel before truly solving the mystery. Readers who just want a simple mystery may want to skip this title. On the other hand, for those that love a complex series of clues to piece together, I suggest putting The Appeal on the top of your to-read list.