If competition in academia is typically so fierce because the stakes are so low, what will happen when the stakes are raised to murder? It’s a question every bit as thorny as the conundrums facing the venerable British institutions – amateur dramatics, children’s literature, niche religious cults – skewered by Janice Hallett in her previous novels. With The Examiner, she applies her trademark wit and signature cutting-edge epistolary style to the secrets, rivalries, and betrayals within a university setting.
Higher education funding cuts have hit Royal Hastings University and esteemed lecturer Gela Nathaniel has been left with just one course for the 2023–24 academic year: the new MA in Multimedia Art. To prove its worth to university management, she has handpicked six students for the trial run: Alyson Lang, established artist; Patrick Bright, retirement-ready art shop owner; Ludya Parak, single mumtrepreneur; Jonathan Danners, gallery owner; Cameron Wesley, corporate burnout; and Jem Badhuri, recent graduate.
They’re a motley crew to be sure, and it’s not just their different art specialisms that set them apart. Given their diverse characters – not that Gela ever gets round to filling in the diversity forms – tensions bubble from the getting-to-know-you stage as egos and styles collide. After artwork has been incinerated, clay thrown and accusations of both theft and infidelity raised, there seems little chance that the final group project will be a success. Perhaps it’s even worse than that, however, as the group seems be down one student by the end of the course.
Indeed, The Examiner is related through the students’ instant messages, emails, diary entries and coursework submitted via the university’s Doodle IT platform, as well as correspondence from certain members of staff, as accessed by the course’s external examiner. That unfortunate individual is meant to use data available on Doodle to audit the students’ final grades but soon comes to suspect that something terrible has happened during the course.
The canny formatting favoured by Janice Hallett means that the reader occupies the position of the external examiner – that is, the detective. All of the course materials are set out in chronological fashion for the examiner to work through while verifying the grades awarded by Gela, which means that events of the academic year are slowly revealed, as are the personalities of those involved. This renders the story attention-grabbing from the outset, and it’s impossible not to attempt puzzling things out alongside the examiner.
But, while the fact that something peculiar has happened is immediately clear, before the examiner can get to the details and unpicking of the mystery, the intricate character- and world-building are frontloaded in the style of a freshers’ icebreaker event. Interestingly, the mixed media narrative style means that the students and Gela first get to introduce themselves through their welcome messages and stated aims for the course, and then their true natures are revealed through their interactions.
As a group and individually, taken at face value, the six students are thoroughly unlikeable. They’re a perfect storm of shameless egomaniacs with fragile self-esteem who are all willing to ruthlessly pursue their (professional) goals. This means that there’s next to no chance of them sacrificing their plans and pulling together to complete a group project, which really calls into question Gela’s thinking in selecting guinea pigs for a new course centred on diversity, inclusion and cooperation. Still, all the bitching, back-stabbing and attempts at sabotage are really very funny.
Plus, once enough communiqués have built up to allow for a more nuanced interpretation of comments and behaviours, the genius of Hallett’s characterisation becomes further apparent. The group is entirely comprised of anti-heroes, which allows for plenty of schemes and double-crosses and means that it’s impossible to fully get to grips with what’s going on. When it’s feasible that the entire bunch are unreliable narrators, the layers of the mystery deepen and the intrigue mounts.
Although they’re all perfect for their roles, a couple of characters stand out. Relative youngster Jem comes across as a friendly keen bean who is particularly committed to furthering her art career. However, she has a will of iron and a tendency to pursue her curiosity to quite extreme lengths. Her desire to assert herself and willingness to stoop as low as necessary to even a score also give rise to some of the best – both the funniest and the most startling – moments of the story.
While his people-pleasing attitude initially gives him the appearance of Jem’s opposite, the humble Patrick has surprising depth and his everyman nature means that his messages to the others reveal things that the stronger characters would never tease out. The two of them also work well together as a dynamic-ish detective duo, hunting for evidence of their fellow students’ misdemeanours almost from week one. Ultimately, the hijinks, shenanigans and skullduggery of them all are a joy to behold.
Moreover, despite the limited locations, the world-building is just as good as the character-building. In creating Royal Hastings University, Hallett has drawn inspiration from her time at Royal Holloway, University of London, and she has the environment and atmosphere of a university down to a tee. From the petty squabbles to the unnecessary bureaucracy, the lack of resources to the threat of publish or perish, it all rings true and works brilliantly well as a background for a mystery novel. The mundanity of it all really highlights the extraordinary turn of events.
And what perplexing events they are. The external examiner has concluded that one of the students has met a terrible end, but who? How? And why? After the setting and characters have been richly evoked, Hallett allows the mystery to unfold in a tantalising way, dropping intriguing clues into the students’ humdrum messages and providing twist after revelation after twist. Most similarly to The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, the story takes a number of highly unexpected and almost preternatural turns.
The Examiner makes for a riveting guessing game from the outset, combining key aspects of the classic whodunnit with near-impossible puzzles more closely related to a howdunnit and whatexactlywasdunanyway. It all makes for an unexpectedly macabre mystery that delivers surprise after surprise as the six students do their best to one up, show up and cover up their way through a course that proves memorable for all the wrong reasons.
For more epistolary mysteries from Janice Hallett, try The Twyford Code and, if you can cope with the C-word in August, The Christmas Appeal.
Viper
Print/Kindle/iBook
£8.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
