Janice Hallett is an auto-read author for me and The Examiner was another highly-enjoyable book. If you’re not acquainted with Janice Hallett’s style, her novels are not straight prose, they all take the form of a modern epistolary novel. The Examiner combines excerpts from an internal university message board, emails, essays and WhatsApp messages to tell its story.
Opening sentence: Dear Reader, I need to oversee final grades for a Masters degree at a prestigious university.
Welcome to the course
As the opening sentence says, the story takes place in university – a mixed media MA to be precise. The course is run by Gela Nathaniel and has six students – Jem, Alyson, Patrick, Cameron, Ludya and Jonathan.
It soon transpires that some of the students have other agendas and this is what’s so clever about The Examiner‘s format. Through the nature of different people’s message exchanges, the small lies or different takes on situations are revealed simultaneously to the reader, so you are just waiting with anticipation to see when it all comes crashing down and the truth is revealed.
Jem was my favourite character, the youngest on the course, she is deliciously self-centered (and often funny, although unintentionally) but is also the one who takes it upon herself to dig deeper when she is sure things with her fellow students are not all they seem.
Jem Badhuri
Phew! Apart from the fire, that went really well.
I didn’t see the ending coming, it was far more high drama than I was expecting and I mean that in the best way! The Examiner is another fantastic read from Janice Hallett. It’s impossible not be addicted to her writing style. I love the way it’s so clever, perfectly plotted and captures each character’s voice just through their message exchanges. When you add in all the twists and turns – it just keeps the whole read so exciting.
Other Janice Hallett novels to sink your teeth into are: The Appeal, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels and The Twyford Code.
