Can you crack the Twyford Code?
Twyford Code – the blurb
It’s time to solve the murder of the century…
Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children’s book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford’s novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.
Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today?
Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn’t just a writer of forgotten children’s stories. The Twyford Code has great power, and he isn’t the only one trying to solve it...
Treasure hunt for grown ups
Out of the blocks the book takes some getting used to. Delivered in transcripts from audio recordings certain words are misheard (missiles instead of Miss Isles) which was quite jarring. Hallett mentions Enid Blyton in her acknowledgements and it did feel like the Famous Five had grown up and had tea with Dan Brown. Hidden codes and secret investigations were a plenty except the ginger beer was replaced with the hard stuff and people were actually murdered instead of tied up and left in peril.
At times the plot really didn’t make sense to me. I’ve heard it described as clever and Hallet as the Queen of tricksy crime but for the most part I was simply confused. It all lead to an inevitable twist that had everything make sense in the end but by that point I was already uninvested.
