The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

Synopsis
It’s time to solve the murder of the century…

Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford’s novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.

Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today?

Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn’t just a writer of forgotten children’s stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn’t the only one trying to solve it…

Review

The Twyford Code is a book that has been on my radar for a while, so I jumepd at the chance to be part of the blog tour via Viper Books and Random Things Tours. What drew me to this book was the mystery aspect, a secret code hidden in a childhood book that may lead to some treasure. Add on to that the disappearance of a school teacher and you have the ingredients for an intriguing and thrilling read; think Enid Blyton mixed with Agatha Christie.

There are many elements of The Twyford Code that are unique, but the main one is the Janice Hallet’s prose style. This book is narrated via Audio Files with the main character Steven, who is looking to find out what happened to his teacher, who never returned from a school trip with his English class, after visiting the home of Edith Twyford author of a series of children’s books. The Audio Files are fabulous to read, there are the anomalies of speech mixed in, wrongly pronounced words that add to the mystery and give some humour to the plot. The narration of these audio files also give the reader an opportunity to try and work out the puzzle for themselves. This is the reason it took me longer than normal to finish this book as I kept on flicking back to try and see the puzzles myself and work them out.

As a narrator Steven is brilliant, but also unreliable as he can’t remember what happened on that school trip forty years ago. Steven’s story is revealed bit by bit, but we know he has just been released from prison, and is wanting to solve the mystery of Mrs Iles’s death and the secret messages in the books of Edith Twyford. His thoughts and memories come out in a constant stream, jumping from his past, to the present, to the code in the books, and the reason he ended up in Prison. There is also the mystery of Maxine, to whom he addresses his audio recordings, she is obviously important to him as he wants her to known the truth and is leaving the audio files to her. I was completely immersed in his personal story, how he ended up where he is and his reasons for cracking the code.

The Twyford Code is one of the most origional, intelligent and thought provoking books I have read in a long time. I was drawn in from page one, both by Stevens story and by the puzzle that I spent far too long trying to solve myself as well as checking back on the codes to see if I could see it. The Audio narration is a fantastic writing style, giving first person narration added with the problems of relying on voice recognition software. This really is a compelling read, and one I highly recommend. I am now going to buy Janice Hallett’s previous book The Appeal.

I would like to than Viper Books and Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for giving me the opprtunity to be part of the blog tour in return for my honest review.