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

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Forty years ago, Steven "Smithy" Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. When he showed it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, she believed that it was part of a secret code that ran through all of Twyford's novels. And when she disappeared on a class field trip, Smithy became convinced that she had been right. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, I had 48-minutes of the audio left. I sat on my couch and just listened.

If you enjoy books that present puzzles inside of puzzles, ones that carve out a subtle and affecting mystery, this is the book for you. Just remember to have patience and see it through to the conclusion because you need to see the big picture of the puzzle. This is a prime example of how a slow burn turns into a delightful surprise.fulfilling my 2022 goal to read one book each month that was not published in my country that i wanted badly enough to have a copy shipped to me from abroad and then...never read.

This definitely won’t be a book for everyone. If you don’t enjoy books that use other forms of media to tell a story-you may want to steer clear. The ending did help to improve my feelings about this book. Hallett truly came up with a very clever resolution to the story which I greatly enjoyed. And there were some very interesting facts in the Author’s Note. I hope Ms Hallett writes something a little less annoying next time. Replicating The Appeal would not work but there is no need for the bells and whistles if you have a good story. Around 40 years ago, Steven found a copy of Six on Goldtop Hill by Edith Twyford on a London bus and, hoping to be able to sell it for money to buy a chippie tea, took it to school with him. Not exactly a natural scholar, the only class that Steven quite liked was remedial English, which was taught by the unusually charismatic Miss Isles – or ‘missiles’ as the transcription software maintains. According to Miss Isles, Twyford’s books had been banned due to being “nasty, sadistic, moral little tales full of pompous superiority at best and blatant racism at worst”. As Steven was unable to read the book himself, he had to take Miss Isles’ word for it when she claimed there was a note inside saying “Deliver to Alice Isles” and confiscated it. A schoolteacher, Miss Iles, vanishes while on a field trip in 1983. Years later, one of her former pupils, Steven, an ex-convict, tries to make sense of her disappearance. This is no straightforward crime caper dredging up an unsolved mystery, however. Instead, Janice Hallett ( The Appeal) cleverly deploys clues in transcriptions of 200 audio files recorded by Steven on his phone. This innovative approach adds heartbreak to the thrill of the chase as he digresses into his life in and out of prison. The Twyford Code is a lot of fun, but Hallett also writes with care and empathy. Is This Love?But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code holds a great secret, and Smithy may just have the key. Steven Smith has just been released from prison, and he is finally free to investigate a mystery that has haunted him since childhood. Forty years ago, he found a copy of a famous children's book, full of strange markings and annotations, which had been left behind on a bus he was riding. I loved The Appeal last year, but I do think that it and this book had one thing in common which was that it got pretty bogged down in the middle, although the payoff was great. Steve was in a Remedial Reading class but didn't learn to read and write until in prison. When he was fourteen, he found a book on a bus by now discredited children's author, Edith Twyford. He brought the book to his classroom, and their teacher, Miss Isles (missiles), snatched it away from him. She said the series of six Twyford books were now treated as having no useful content and are considered to contain racism, misogyny, sexism, and xenophobia. Nevertheless, she began to read selections from the books to the children. She was enthusiastic about the book and author, being under the belief that a secret code was hidden in her books. Forty years ago, Miss Isles took Steve and four other remedial students to visit the area and old home where Twyford wrote the books many years previously. Steve remembers vividly that Miss Isles disappeared while on the trip and has no memory of how they got home on the bus. Miss Isles was never heard from again. Was she abducted and killed because she knew too much about the Code? Hallett sprang to attention with her debut The Appeal in 2021, gracing Waterstone’s window displays and Sunday Times’ Crime Book of the Year… and, to be fair, it was a breath of fresh air in its take on the crime genre.