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

This mystery is a must-read for those who like word puzzles and want to be taken on an adventure. Steven Smith is an ex-con trying to get his life back on track after spending 11 years in jail for murder. He ran with a group of thugs who dabbled into everything from drugs and protection to prostitution and money laundering. Smith has had a tragic childhood which set him on this course. His mother and father abandoned him, and he was “looked after” in a very loose sense by his only relative, his older brother. Often Smith was starving for food, shelter, and affection. He found his only solace in a remedial reading class with five other troubled classmates. Smith could never read well, but the comfort he received listening to stories in his reading class made a difference. So did his teacher, Miss Isles.Smith found an abandoned book on a bus that he brought to his reading class. Miss Isles became excited when she saw it. The book was a story written for children suffering through the hardships of World War II. Its author, Edith Twyford, had long been reviled. Her books were thought juvenile and inappropriate in later years. Miss Isles, however, lets the class in on a secret: embedded in Twyford’s books was a code that was reputed to lead to a massive treasure for whoever could crack the code. Miss Isles started reading Twyford’s books to the class and suggested the class take an unauthorized field trip to Twyford’s old house in the country at the end of the school semester. The class had a wonderful day exploring the place and fields until Miss Isles disappeared. She could not be found to drive the kids home. She was never seen or heard from again.Smith has had a lot of time to wonder what happened to his teacher in the decades. Try as he might, he can’t remember the particular order of events that day that led to Miss Isles’s disappearance. When he gets out of jail, he decides he owes it to his teacher, as one of the few positive people in his life, to find out what happened to her. Smith contacts his former classmates to see if anything jogs their memories of that day. Not everyone is pleased to see him. His classmates had moved on from that time so many years ago. Several are intrigued by the lure of the treasure hunt, so they agree to help Smith in a limited way. After all, their lives have changed from their schooldays. They have families and responsibilities, unlike Smith. He knows he will shoulder much of the search on his own.He finds a kindly librarian who helps him look up records and search through clues about the Twyford Code. He realizes that someone else is searching too, and not necessarily for his teacher, but for the treasure. These men will eliminate anyone who gets in their way.I was less than pleased when I first started reading because the entire book is written as individual transcripts of Smith’s conversations and musings that he records on his cellphone. The story is so riveting that the format ceased to bother me at all. As a word puzzle lover, the acrostics and anagrams Smith uncovers had me on the hunt, too. This is a tremendously involving story, but I warn readers that many implied expletives take it entirely out of the cozy genre. If you love word puzzles and like a challenge, read this book. Oh, and the conclusion is fantastic.

As much as I enjoy epistolary novels, the audio files did not interest me. Bored. In the end the novel was just not for this reader.

This is a very well plotted and highly original thriller. Quite weighted to the end where everything finally unravels, so takes a while to get going.And simply not in the same league as The Appeal, which is staggeringly well written.

Janice Hallet is a genuis! From page 1 it is. clear how much thought and effort went into crafting this book. Steven Smith is an ex convict who was a part of the famous FSBC heist in London. Now he's chasing down the mystery from his childhood, what happened to Miss Isle and how did she end up missing?Told through audio files, this was a well paced book. I appreciated how the audio transcripts were split into different sections. There were quite a few twists I did not see coming. The ending left me stunned. I do think this is one of those books that needs to be read physically. The way this is written makes it truly feel like audio transcriptions and I love how I had to solve what some words on the page meant -ie missiles = Miss Isle's. There are a couple of extra inserts, time references pauses etc that I wish I would have able to flip to the beginning and read the key again. - so read this one physically for sure.While the final twist was not my favourite, I did enjoy this book. I just beileve I would have adored it if I had read it in a different format so I could tab clues and solve the mystery while reading. Overall this was such a fun, clever, and intriguing mystery.

I really enjoyed this read. I have never read a book from the perspective of audio recordings, and let me say, I really enjoyed it! The only down side was at the beginning it was a little hard to follow because of the errors (ex. missiles took me quite a bit to figure out what he was saying). I would just like to see a little more on the decipher code at the beginning. But, other than that I could not put this down! It’s a must read for me to tell my other bookies to read! Great author!

I absolutely loved The Appeal and was excited for the chance to read The Twyford Code, which also features Hallett's skill in telling a story in a unique way. The main character in The Twyford Code is narrating a story into an old iPhone and the reader is given transcripts from those recordings to read. Steven, the main character, begins working to solve a code and describes that adventure, as well as events from his past.While I couldn't turn the pages fast enough when reading The Appeal, this one seemed to go around in circles during large portions of the book. The transcription discrepancies that turned phrases such as "must have" into "mustard" were amusing but took time to get used to. There were also a lot of slang terms I was unfamiliar with. In addition, although Steve's backstory is important, I think some of it could have been streamlined and the reader would have still gotten the details they needed. I'm usually a fast reader, but it took me a while to get through the first portion of the book.I'm so glad I stuck with it, though! The last part is fantastic and things start coming together that show how clever the whole book really is. The ending is wonderful and very surprising and will keep me thinking about this story for a long time.I received this ebook through the courtesy of Viper Books. An advance copy was provided to me at no cost, but my review is voluntary and unbiased.

A great deal of hype around this book and it proved to me beyond all doubt that I should know better than to believe it! I found this very strange: it confirmed for me that I much prefer my literature with at least a smidgeon of exactly that- some degree of style and well-chosen words. I accept that the idiosyncratic nature of “transcribed” phone records is not literary in any way and that this was a large part of the purpose of the novel but for me it quickly grated. I found myself speed reading through a great deal as I was not at all caught up in solving the code, such as it was and the transcriptions were tedious. Throughout, the only element that held my interest was the life story of the main protagonist and I would have much rather had that expanded as there seemed the basis of some genuine insights into how people make the choices in life that they do. I did read to the end, hence two rather than one stars in my rating and I do concede that the ending was interesting. Unfortunately, I felt its method of getting there did not engage me in the slightest. I realise that so many others have thoroughly enjoyed this and found it very clever. I do enjoy crime fiction as a form of escapism(very useful over the past two years!) but I think I will give “mysteries” a miss. When I saw a review mentioning Agatha Christie meeting Enid Blyton, I should have known; neither would be my choice. I also find the concept of the unreliable narrator somewhat overdone currently; it seems a bit of a fad and I hope it doesn’t last. I will not bother with this author’s other book.

‘The Twyford Code’ by Janice Hallett is a remarkable novel, unlike anything I have ever read before. So, just a taste of the plot as I feel that this is a novel best read ‘cold’.Forty years ago, Steven Smith had found a discarded copy of a book written by disgraced children’s author, Edith Twyford. Steven is unable to understand the strange markings and annotations in the book’s margins. So he shows it to his Remedial English teacher, Miss Isles. This sets off a chain of events that reverberates down to the present day.Miss Isles becomes convinced that the book contains messages that form a secret code that has been scattered throughout Twyford’s novels. She eventually takes her small class of five, including Steven, on an outing to visit Twyford’s seaside home. During the trip home Miss Isles disappears and Steven has no memory of how.Her disappearance has haunted Steven. Following his release from a prison sentence, he is determined to discover the truth. His quest is recorded as a series of audio files created on his estranged son’s smartphone.This story is primarily presented via transcripts of these files, complete with amusing transcription blips. Steven has a unique take on life, the universe, and everything and proved a delightful protagonist.It’s fairly obvious that Edith Twyford and her Super Six books were inspired by Enid Blyton. The extracts included from Twyford’s stories were spot on with respect to the style of Blyton’s adventure books for children.I found ‘The Twyford Code’ an intriguing and wickedly complex mystery. There is also plenty of humour scattered throughout the transcripts along with references to other books.‘The Twyford Code’ was an instant hit with me.Very highly recommended.

I really enjoyed The Appeal and looking forward to Janice Hallett's second book. I finished it but it was a relief to do so, more than anything else. The story wasn't very interesting and just seemed to get more ridiculous as it went on. I found the whole thing to be really disappointing.

A tale with a fascinating premiss, that a children’s author has encoded secrets in the text of her books. The book nicely parodies Enid Blyton with the stories spanning the years from war time Briton to nearer the present day. To add mystery, the stories and the hidden codes, are presented as mutating as literary tastes change. The early source texts are hilariously over the top but they develop a more anodyne style over subsequent editions. The novel’s primary hero is, perhaps, a complex character with a very shady past and family background.The author uses the supposed machine transcription of voice recordings on a phone presented in short bursts of text to build the story, the characters and attempting a few cliff hangers. I found the style quickly became tedious. There you have it, tedious. I had no desire to read to the end and discover any of the answers that might be there. I have no idea how things turned out.Many other readers have enjoyed this work so there must be something in it that I missed

Rating: 4.6/5I really enjoyed Janice Hallett's innovative debut novel, "The Appeal", but this second book is even better.On the face of it, "The Twyford Code" is about a former prisoner, Steven Smith, looking back on a significant moment from his childhood: Steven comes across a book by the famous writer of children's fiction, Edith Twyford (based very obviously on Enid Blyton). The teacher of Steven's remedial English class, Miss Isles, is convinced that there is a secret code that runs through this and other books by the same author. She even takes the class on a trip to Dorset to visit the home of Edith Twyford. During the trip, Miss Isles disappears, but Steven's memory won't allow him to remember the details surrounding that day. Having been released from prison many years later, Steven starts to look into his teacher's disappearance and also the veracity of the mysterious Twyford Code.As she did in her debut, Janice Hallett takes an unconventional and original approach to constructing this novel. This time around she makes use of the medium of voice recordings as the vehicle for the narrative. If you are the kind of person who likes your reading material to be full of flowing prose, then this will probably not be the book for you, as you are likely to find it irritating. However, for those who enjoy seeing a writer trying something fresh and different that both challenges and engages the reader in an unorthodox way, this will be a welcome breath of fresh air. Yes, it is likely to take you a little while to become accustomed to following the format relatively fluently, but once you have, you can really begin to appreciate the degree of craft, and also the wit, that has gone into the structure of the content.There is something very satisfying about a complicated mystery that (ultimately) actually makes sense. "The Twyford Code" has been so cleverly assembled and the eventual unravelling of the mystery is an absolute joy. This may not be one for conservative traditionalists, but that aside, if you are a keen reader of the mystery genre, then I would urge you to add this to your reading list. I don't give out many 5-star ratings for book reviews, but "The Twyford Code" absolutely deserves that mark and I am already looking forward to book three from Janice Hallett.