Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett (Atria Books, September 2025) is my third book by Hallett. All of her books, those I’ve read and those I’ve yet to read, are told in epistolary style, meaning the story is told through a series of letters, or in modern terms, a series of emails, interoffice communications, text messages, diary or journal entries, etc. If you are a churchgoer, you will recognize this style in St. Paul’s letters (epistles) to the communities where he preached: Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, and Rome.

When I started teaching middle school literature in 2007, my choice as to what to teach was somewhat limited by the classroom sets of novels available to me. One box of books was Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman. Set in the Middle Ages, this YA novel is told in epistolary style, diary entries written by Catherine, a spoiled brat of a child forced to write a diary so she can she how childish she is through her very own writing. I loved teaching that book, and I discovered that I loved epistolary style novels through it.

When seeking out books utilizing this specific writing tool, I discovered The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer. Lovely book, lovely story, and quite a good movie (which I rarely find to be true when something on the page I love goes to the screen). Highly recommend both book and movie!

Then, I stumbled on a really old book, first published in 1970, 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. If you are a reader (which I hope is what brought you to my website) and you love all things England, this is the book for you! Again, page to screen highly successful.

But, my favorite all time novel told in epistolary style is Love and Saffron by Kim Fay. What a glorious book! It’s short, about food, friends, family, and also about love and loss, and I completely devoured it. Please do read it! See my full review (fangirl letter?) here!

Not all epistolary works hit a home run for me. Years ago I plucked from the “new books” shelf at my library Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday.

It was set partially in England, partially in Scotland (my favorite of the UK countries), and partially in – Yemen – and it is about salmon fishing, told in interoffice memos. It was dry and boring and hard to get through. Until…until Hollywood decided it should be a movie starring Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor. Oh my, what a beautiful movie. The scenes in Scotland are breathtaking. I highly recommend the movie!

That brings us full circle to Janice Hallett. My first Hallett book was The Appeal. I read that in 2023 and gave it 3 stars. It was intriguing to me, being British and epistolary, but I found it confusing at parts. I gave it 3 stars.

My second Hallett was The Examiner, which I read in 2024, and I really liked it. I gave this one 5 stars!

The story is told through posts on a university intranet, an art college specifically. While I also found a bit of the confusion I felt in The Appeal, this book was much more intriguing—which led me to request from NetGalley and Atria Books an ARC of Hallett’s next novel, The Killer Question. I’m giving this one 3 stars again.

This storyline takes place in a pub that hosts trivia nights every Monday. It just so happens that my husband and I occasionally participate in a trivia night with some friends, in fact, we are going tonight! So I thought I would really enjoy this murder mystery. However, it is very, very slow. Some reviewers say that it doesn’t really become good until the 50% mark (many reviewers are like me Kindle readers and deal with percentages rather than pages).

For me, the story being told this time in text messages is not as compelling. There are many different groups in this one chat group of trivia teams and another of pubs in the area that also host trivia nights. Naturally, there’s a current story, and a backstory, and a future (?) story. It was all just a bit much for me.

One other thing that kind of drove me crazy was that Sue and Mal, a husband and wife team who own the pub called The Case is Altered (I know, WTH?), share the pub phone and so their entries in these group text messages are never clear who is doing the talking. I found that cumbersome to have to figure that out and for me it broke up the story.

There’s a lot going on in this book. I’m sort of on the fence with Janice Hallett and her epistolary-style novels. This soon to be published novel already has 183 ratings in Goodreads, with an average of 4.29 stars so lots of people do enjoy her work, including this latest novel. However, there is considerable back and forth on the internet about Hallett’s acknowledgement that she used Chat GPT to create the names for various fictional places in this novel. I’m not so crazy about that.

If you are looking to expand your reading to include epistolary novels, please try some of the ones I’ve mentioned. If you want to try one of Hallett’s, I recommend The Examiner, although there are lots of people (over 70,000!) on Goodreads who loved The Appeal. All reading is good, right?

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!