Dear Great Book Guru,  Next week I’m planning on going to the Mardi Gras Pancake Dinner at St. Luke’s. Sea Cliff has so many great events like this  throughout the year, so I was intrigued when a  friend mentioned a book about a community where events go very much awry.  Any thoughts?  Lover of a Good Story

 Dear Lover of a Good Story,  THE APPEAL by Janice Hallett is a wonderfully compelling read about a small  village  outside of London where things are not as they seem. The Fairway Players is a local theater group about to put on  Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” – a play in which a family is bound together by a dark secret.   In the opening pages of this novel, we learn that a murder has occurred on the night of the final rehearsal and there are fifteen possible suspects - all members of the troupe. The lead attorney on the case instructs his two young assistants to examine all the material he has gathered (emails, texts, recorded phone calls) and decide who is the murderer. We are introduced to each of the suspects through this correspondence - leading to a plethora of information but we are never sure if what we are presented is accurate. In effect we have fifteen unreliable narrators. There is a mingling of humor and horror as the story unfolds with a shocking albeit very satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended!