I first saw The Twyford Code in a bookshop around the end of last year and the cover intrigued me. But since I’ve been pretty good with not buying books (I’m sorry, bookshops!), I recently ended up borrowing the book from the library.

Told through a series of audio transcripts, The Twyford Code is the story of Steven Smith as he not only tells his story, but also tries to make sense of his past by investigating if a series of children’s books actually contain a secret code.

Now, this being a mystery, I can’t really talk too much about the plot but I loved it! It’s so smart and basically the kind of book that forces you to go back and relook at the text to realise that there were clues hidden in plain sight. It reminds me a little of the Rabbits book – though Rabbits was clearly set in a different world and had a very different vibe. Well… I guess what I’m saying is that both books are puzzles that you can solve, and that is a lot of fun.

Another book I thought of while reading this was The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – mostly because Evelyn Hardcastle was a book I recognised as clever but found confusing, while I found Twyford Code to be both clever (I’m still trying to figure out how certain sections were written/conceived of) and easy to follow along (in terms of plot).

As for the children’s books in the text (aka the ones that contain the Twyford code), for some reason, they made me think of Enid Blyton. Not the actual excerpts, because those sound like propaganda, but because Blyton has also been criticised as racist, xenophobic, too simplistic, her books banned in school libraries, etc. I’m pleased to discover that this similarity is not made up by me, because Hallett names Blyton as an inspiration in the acknowledgements section of the book.

As for characters, I really liked Steven Smith. He definitely had a troubled childhood and committed crimes that landed him in jail, but I could see from the start of the book that he was trying to change things around. I was definitely rooting for him to solve the mystery and heal his personal hurts, and I liked that the mystery was tied so closely to his childhood. It definitely helped to balance both the character arc and the story arc.

Overall, I found this to be a fun and inventive mystery! I definitely had problems putting it down, especially towards the end, and I would definitely recommend this to fans of mysteries. I’m also definitely going to be picking up another of Hallet’s books (as long as I remember to do so)!

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