What a treat to be back in a world created by the machiavellian Janice Hallett. After the brilliance of her debut, The Appeal – the story of a murder in a small village with 15 suspects, which the reader solved along with the investigators and that was far too good to be a first novel – Hallett gave us something different entirely in The Twyford Code, a transcription of audio files, packed with codes to crack, revealing the secrets of a vanished teacher. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels (Viper, £16.99) is, again, entirely fresh and different. This time, Hallett delves into darker territory, as true-crime writer Amanda Bailey has the task of digging into the old case of a cult that persuaded a girl that her baby was the antichrist. The self-styled Angels all killed themselves at the time and the baby went into the care system. But 18 years on, Bailey’s publisher wants her to track the child down because there’s money to be made from their story. “There are no tragic blondes. Just a wacky cult, four dead, mutilated men and a mystery no one’s had the chance to uncover properly yet. You’ll be the first. Imagine that,” her agent persuades her. Told as if we were opening the safe deposit box that holds Bailey’s documents – a mix of emails, transcriptions, texts and articles – this thriller slowly pieces together a story that is very different from the one told in the press at the time. Another cracking mystery from an author with gallons of talent and bags of originality.
