The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels: the Bestselling Richard & Judy Book Club Pick

Product Information

Long-buried truth meets long-awaited fiction with deadly consequences in The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, the third fiendishly complex novel by Janice Hallett. It’s an unconventional way to approach a crime novel, but hopefully readers are getting used to my style now. The story is told in fragments of mixed media, as we are told we're reading Amanda's files after the fact.

Amanda is determined to find the baby before anyone else, hoping that the exclusive scoop will revive her struggling career. Dit intrigerende mysterie zorgt voor een erg leuke leeservaring, want het is een gelaagd, sterk uitgedacht, origineel opgebouwd en knap geconstrueerd geheel dat je aan het denken zet. It combines the best aspects of the thriller and the whodunnit to present a challenging conundrum for readers to unravel. In her second book, The Twyford Code, I connected hard with the characters thanks to some clever twistiness and she still had the nice puzzle element, even leveled up a little.The ‘Alperton Angels’ were a tiny cult in the early 2000s; after several members died, their manipulative leader was given a life sentence. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that we don’t really get a huge feel for the main characters as people, but I just didn’t find myself caring, which then leads me to not feel engaged with the novel as a whole. Attempting to kill the baby, they’re fortunately stopped when the baby’s mother contacts the police. This is a book with multiple layers and complex characters, and the story will turn into another direction every now and then.

The whereabouts of these three becoming a mystery that people have obsessed about ever since and as the baby is about to turn eighteen there is renewed interest in the finding them. Sometimes I look in the mirror and tell myself ‘you can’t run from the third-person, past tense narrative forever’. While I've read plenty of epistolary works before, this author's trademark is to notch things a bit higher, entangling the reader as deep in the mystery as possible, encouraging them to really root through the clues for the truth. When she agrees to cooperate in a documentary (the crew see Baftas lining up, their duty of care to a vulnerable mother sadly missing), Nora hopes to raise someone’s memory… but will doing so risk her son’s life and her own? Not for your brain either because that's just going to explode into such a big pile of mush that you'll forget your own name.I was somewhat confused with the resolution honestly, despite it being well set up (again, I think this is will be very bad in audiobook) and not sure if a few things were as well explained as they could like the mad squaddie and his role, and why the fuck did Ellie tell her stupid theory about Lady Louise to Oliver, or was Ellie some kind of double agent? I think it's safe to say that I will read any future book by Janice Hallett, since I liked all three so far. However, she is forced to collaborate with rival author Olivier Menzies (who happens to be better connected). But the biggest problem is that this narrative is framed as a mystery without delivering the pleasures of a mystery.

The set-up, the first page, read and do something or read and do nothing, which is hammered again at the ending was also a bit, well contrived. Assisted by Ellie Cooper, who is helping in transcribing the interviews and phone conversations, Amanda is determined, perceptive and fearless, committed to getting to the bottom of things. More in the vein of The Appeal than The Twyford Code, this is another irresistibly page-turning mystery, this time following true crime author Amanda Bailey as she attempts to revive her career with a book about a cold case. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby's trail. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.I know that’s the point of them, especially when you’re trying to solve the puzzle, but it’s not my favourite. In the face of coincidence and unexplained phenomena we are all at the mercy of our own thought processes. Will this be a carefully curated dossier, involving multiple voices, some of them intriguingly unreliable?