THE TWYFORD CODE

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.

Hugely impressed by Janice Hallett's The Appeal, I had to buy her second novel, The Twyford Code and was equally pleased, though for slightly different reasons.Once again, what we have here is an ingenious mystery novel, constructed in an unusual fashion - where The Appeal was primarily made up of emails, the bulk of The Twyford Code comprises 200 voice notes, left by one-time career criminal Steve Smith. Transcriptions of these (supposedly made by software, and so containing a series of transcription errors) have been sent by a police inspector to a professor to ask if he can throw any light on them.At the heart of the story are a series of books by a variant of Enid Blyton called Edith Twyford. The equivalent to the Famous Five is the Secret Six, and a Secret Six book that Smith encounters while at school seems to both contain mysterious coded messages and to be linked to the disappearance of his school teacher, an event that still haunts him from many years in the past. Smith ends up meeting up with some old school friends who act as sort of anti-Secret Six in trying to work out the mystery.Incidentally, I have no idea why the tagline says 'It's time to solve the murder of the century' - there is a murder in the story, but it isn't really what the story is about at all... and it certainly isn't the murder of the century in any identifiable sense.As was the case with The Appeal, what makes this book work so well is the multi-layered mechanism of the the medium - in this case those voice messages, with occasional recorded conversations. Hallett incorporates all kinds of deception, some of which you might be able to predict if you've read the previous novel, but most of which take the reader by surprise. In the final section of the book, the professor uncovers what really happened - it's all there to see, but pretty well impossible to predict.One of the quotes on the back says this is 'even better than The Appeal' - I don't think this is true. Because the storytelling here is mostly a monologue, rather than a series of interactions between different characters, it didn't engage me as much as The Appeal did (though it was certainly still un-put-down-able). However, it makes up for that by setting a far more complex puzzle, with a wonderfully convoluted relationship between what you read and what it's actually about. It's rather like one of those beautiful, jewel-like Japanese puzzle boxes: it's so intricate and beautifully constructed. Even though I did spot one of the coded messages that eventually would give everything away, I didn't interpret what it meant correctly at the time. The plot is, admittedly, far-fetched - but this genuinely doesn't matter.Overall another brilliant triumph for Hallett. Can't wait to read book number three.

I love it! It's such an incredible story, like this authorìs previous book (The Appeal). She's certainly a talented writer and storyteller. I can't wait for the next one.

I absolutely loved The Appeal so I thought I would try her second novel. The Appeal was such a change and the format was refreshing and innovating but it does not work the second time round. I must admit that I never thought she would try the same format again. The Twyford code is not interesting, with always the same person relating his audio recordings and it goes..... nowhere. It is extremely rare for me to write a negative book review and even rarer to not even finish a book. I gave up halfway through ..... I was thoroughly bored. What a shame !

No me lo he podido ni acabar. Que la novela esté escrita a base de audios grabados en el teléfono ya me hizo desconfiar y con razón. Solo hay una voz protagonista bastante monocorde y todo pasa a través de ella. Por si fuera poco, el protagonista no es interesante y la trama se vuelve cada vez más inverosímil, hasta que llegó a un punto en que decidí dejarlo por imposible. No lo recomiendo. No tiene nada que ver con LA APELACIÓN.