The Examiner - Janice Hallett *****

Ever since the release of her stunning The Appeal, Janice Hallett has amazed with her ability to tell a mystery story through the medium of a collection of documents - The Examiner maintains that remarkable quality. Here the main vehicle is a university intranet’s chat groups, though we do also get some emails and WhatsApp threads.

The setting is a new MA course in multimedia arts, where the six students are very diverse. We are told right up front that there is a suspicion that one of the participants has died. Once again, Hallett enables us to get a wonderful picture of the personalities of the course members and their tutor - and it rapidly becomes clear that something odd is going on. The delight is in working out exactly what has happened and why.

Along the way there are several big twists as different evidence emerges. One of these is brilliant - only achievable through this kind of storytelling. And while the underlying plot is in places quite dark, Hallett continues to be able to include a considerable amount of humour, often in the lack of self-awareness of some of her characters.

My only mild negative here is that elements of the plot when finally fully revealed are, to say the least, far fetched. But that didn’t spoil my continuing admiration for the skill with which Hallett assembles these amazing novels. The epistolary form often makes a book feel a little sterile, distancing the reader from the characters and from the action, but it never does in Hallett’s novels. Superb.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

You can buy The Examiner from Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:

Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

Search This Blog