Source of book: Audiobook from the library
My wife picked this one for a recent vacation - something short enough for our modest drive, available, and one that interested her. It is a cozy British mystery, more or less, but one with an unusual epistolary format that harkens back to Wilkie Collins, but with a modern setting.
Apparently, this is the second in a series of books featuring The Fairway Players, a small-town community theater group, which is modeled after one the author was part of for many years. It has the usual petty squabbles that any non-profit or community group has - if you have ever been part of a church, you know exactly what I mean.
Central to this mystery is the controversial change in leadership after the deaths of the couple that ran the group for many decades. Celia Halliday, pretentious and “old money,” assumed she was next in line. But the vote elected Sarah-Jane and Kevin MacDonald instead - younger upstarts with new ideas.
There is already a lot of drama surrounding the use of a giant beanstalk for the yearly pantomime - it’s old, heavy, scruffy, and may be made of asbestos - but things escalate during the performance itself, when Celia’s attempt at sabotage leads instead to the appearance of a mummified body in a Santa outfit appearing on stage.
Of course, this being theater, the show goes on - rather brilliantly - but then, the investigation begins. Who is the body? Who killed him? How long ago did he die?
In keeping with the conventions of the British Murder Mystery, nearly everyone is a suspect - all of the main characters for sure. And the investigation leads to other strange discoveries. Are some members running a drug ring? Was there domestic violence below the surface of the happy company? It turns out that a lot of people have secrets - many of them buried for decades. And, of course, there is the question as to whether the pantomime will raise enough money to fix the roof of the church, or if the company will lose its venue.
As I mentioned, the book is written in epistolary form. The framing story is that of the two attorneys, Femi and Charlotte, who read through all of the documentation - emails, police reports, newspaper articles, texts - and try to reconstruct the case.
Most of the book consists of these documents, which gradually reveal what happened. It takes a bit of work to follow at first, particularly as an audiobook, because there are a lot of characters to keep straight, along with their relationships - and role in the factions that divide the company.
The book is also very British - be prepared for “jumpers,” “trainers,” and even the idea of a “pantomime,” a very British form of entertainment. For those of us who were practically raised on British literature, this isn’t an issue, but neophytes might want to look a few things up.
The humor is pretty good in the book, starting with the “Round Robin” (what we Americans would call an annual Christmas letter) from Celia, which is an excellent over-the-top satire of the genre. I mean, how does one make one’s son being released from prison sound triumphant and pretentious? Celia can do it, for sure.
The petty bickering, the very local politics, the bitchiness behind the scenes - these are all hilarious and familiar. I wish I could remember more lines, but I was driving, and am writing this over a week after we listened to it, and I can’t find any quotes online; and for that matter, they were funny in context but would make little sense out of it. But I did laugh at many of them.
This is light reading, a good winter equivalent of a beach read (although, this being California, we did have a lovely warm day at the beach on this trip…) I’ll give it points for tight plotting, without the holes that some modern mysteries have. (Seriously: some authors desperately need a good editor.) The ending was fine, although not unexpected. The fun isn’t so much in solving the mystery in this case, as enjoying the characters navigating each increasingly ludicrous situation. Nothing wrong with that.
I could see reading more of Hallett’s books when I need a light read.
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