Janice Hallett Books In Order

Publication Order of The Appeal Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Janice Hallett
Janice Hallett is a former magazine editor and award winning journalist, and has written articles and speeches for Home Office, the Cabinet Office, and Department for International Development, among others.

Her first feature film “Retreat” was released by Sony Pictures (co-written and directed by Carl Tibbetts) which starred Thandie Newon, Cillian Murphy, and Jamie Bell. Janice’s stage plays have been performed at Hen & Chickens, Theatre503, TheatreN16, and The White Bear. She was also one of six female playwrights chosen by All the Rage Theatre for its Seize the Stage festival at Rich Mix.

Janice’s play “Netherbard” has been performed twice by Budding Rose Productions, and has had television scripts in development with Slim Film & TV and with Retort. Her sitcom, titled “Two Ladies” was performed was performed at the Museum of Comedy in June of 2019. She was selected for the Triforce Creative Network’s year long mentoring scheme and was featured on the BBC New Talent Hotlist. Janice won Best New Screenplay in the 2014 British Independent Film Festival.

Janice’s love of travel has taken all around the world several times, for the Galapagos to Madagascar, Guatemala to Japan, Zimbabwe, Russia, and South Korea.

For “The Appeal”, the innovative format Janice used was really just a happy accident that became the aspect of the novel she is most proud of. Before deciding she would write a novel, she had this vague idea for a TV series about this couple that return from volunteering overseas and whose experience inform their suspicions about this local fundraising campaign.

When she began writing “The Appeal”, she thought: why not take this same story, but just present it all as emails which fly back and forth ‘off-stage’, between the minor players? This is why you never hear from the three main characters and becomes one of the most effective devices of the entire novel. Once she was in the flow of writing, she kept track of the characters naturally, which is helped a lot by the fact that they are all quite different.

Because she wrote “The Appeal” back to back with “The Twyford Code”, she had to make sure she did not essentially write the same novel twice. So she made some rules. Because “The Appeal” was an ensemble with female leads, she vowed to follow a single character’s personal journey and this character would be a male, in the second book.

“The Appeal” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2021. One murder with fifteen suspects. Can you learn the truth?

There is a mystery to solve in this quiet town of Lower Lockwood. It begins with the arrival of these two secretive newcomers, and it ends with a tragic death. Roderick Tanner QC has just assigned law students Femi and Charlotte to this case. Somebody has already been shipped off to prison for the murder, however he suspects that they are innocent. And that much darker secrets have yet to be uncovered.

Throughout the amateur dramatics society’s disastrous staging of All My Sons and the sketchy charity appeal for one young girl’s medical treatment, the killer hid in plain sight. The evidence is all right there, just waiting to be discovered. However will Femi and Charlotte solve this case? Will you?

“The Twyford Code” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2022. Time to solve the murder of the century. Forty years ago, Steven Smith found this copy of some famous children’s book written by disgraced author Edith Twyford, with its margins being filled with odd annotations and markings. Wanting to know more about it, he took it to Miss Iles, his English teacher, not realizing he was setting in motion a series of events.

Miss Iles became convinced that this book was the key piece to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code was running through each one of Twyford’s books. But then Miss Iles vanishes during a class trip, and Steven has zero memory of what happened to her.

Steven, now just out of prison after a long stretch, decides he will investigate this mystery which has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered or was she actually deluded? Could she have been right about the code? And is it still being used today?

Desperate to recover his memories and discover what actually happened to Miss Iles, he revisits the places and people from his childhood. However it quickly becomes obvious that Edith Twyford was not just the author of forgotten kid’s stories. The Twyford Code holds great power, and he is not the only person attempting to solve it.

“The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2023. Open up the safe deposit box. Inside there is research materials for a true crime book. You have to read through the documents, and then make a choice. Will you take them to the cops? Or will you just destroy them?

Everybody knows the tale of the Alperton Angels: the cult-like group that were convinced that one of their member’s children was the anti-Christ, and were on a divine mission to murder it. Until the child’s mom, named Holly, came to her senses and phoned the police. The Angels all committed suicide rather than go to prison, and both Holly and her baby each vanished into the care system.

Almost two decades later, Amanda Bailey (a true crime author) is penning a book about the Angels. The Alperton baby is now eighteen, and can finally be interviewed. If Amanda could just find them, it’d be the true crime scoop of the year, and will save her flagging career. However Oliver Menzies, a rival author, is equally as smart, better connected, and is on the baby’s trail, too.

While Oliver and Amanda are forced to work together, they realize that what everybody believes they know about the Angels is actually wrong, and the truth is something that s much stranger and darker than they had ever imagined. This here story is far from over, and is not going to have any sort of happy ending.