Just Finished Reading … The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

Here’s my first review for the year! 

This was my Jolabokaflode reading for Christmas Eve 2023, and it was great fun, perfect for Christmas Eve reading.

The Fairway Players, an amateur drama group, are performing their annual Christmas pantomime. This year, it’s Jack And The Beanstalk, and they have managed to borrow a Beanstalk prop from another drama group. Actually, the Fairway Players had performed this show before, about thirty years ago, using the same prop. 

And during this performance, a skeleton in a Santa Claus costume tumbles out of the Beanstalk. 

All this while all sorts of crazy things are going wrong. The plan is to end the show with Santa Claus handing out sweets to the children in the audience, as the company does every year, but the sweets they have ordered turn out to be something else, not remotely suitable for children. 

Mind you, the children in the audience seem to think the show is hilarious, just what they want to see.

The title is based on the fact that they are trying to raise money to fix the roof of the church where they are performing, because it was wrecked by bat poo during their last show. 

The novel is entirely written in emails, text messages and extracts from police interviews. It feels very real, because everyone is slanging off and backstabbing everyone else in the company, whether it’s over getting to play a plum role or over who gets to make the decisions on what plays are chosen. The author has done amateur drama herself, and I suspect she has experienced at least some of this behaviour. 

And meanwhile, they have a skeleton to deal with. Who could have done it? Somehow, that is less important than who gets to play the lead in the next production, or even what the next show is going to be - farce is so out of date…except, maybe, the farce happening around them?

Definitely worth a read, if you enjoy your cosy mysteries funny - which I certainly do. 

The novel is easily available from any good book web site. If you want it in ebook, it’s available in both Apple Books and Kindle. You can also buy it in Audible audiobook.