Library Limelights 313

 

Janice Hallett. The Twyford Code. USA: Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2022.

The oh-so-clever Ms Hallett does brilliance again. A mystery unfolds in unusual form ‒ transcribed audio recordings ‒ discovered encrypted in the phone of a missing man. A Professor Mansfield is reviewing it at police request regarding the contents. We rather quickly learn that Steve Smith is the narrator, a dyslexic schoolboy who grew into a small-time hoodlum with a criminal London gang. Just one of Andy Harrison's lads, but with bed and board it felt more like a family than Steve had ever had. The affiliation earned him a few prison stays and a murder conviction. It also earned him disgust from older brother Colin, and his grown son wants nothing to do with him—a son he longs to see. On the phone Steve is recording his experiences in a search for a hidden code in the children's books of (deceased author) Edith Twyford. "Maxine" is the intended recipient of the recordings.

Steve's project harks back to school days when Remedial English ("are E") teacher Miss Iles ("missiles") read them a Twyford book found by Steve. (The transliteration software has occasional phonetic glitches explained at the beginning.) These Twyford books were banned! and allegedly they contain a secret code, she tells her little class, exciting them; later she drives them to see Twyford's birthplace but never returns from the trip. All reached home that night but even years later the participants are confused about the whole outing. In the present day, Steve tries to co-opt the others―Nathan, Michelle, Donna and Paul―to assist in his hunt for the code, receiving varied and/or odd reactions from them.

Just when you think Steve is flogging a dead horse (or the author lost her direction) the code starts to make sense as a real thing, especially since someone is trying to stop him. Whatever happened to Miss Iles twenty years ago becomes more important for Steve as old memories begin to playback. Lucy the librarian provides more help than anyone else. You can't help being charmed by Steve's vernacular and native wit in a surprisingly convoluted mystery with spies, internet conspiracies, and dramatic heists. And like Steve, you must pay attention to every word; it's a serious challenge for word-play fanatics who will love it! Never would you guess the true substance of the entire project.

One-liners

▪ Five kids who found two of the most basic skills, reading and writing, difficult to impossible. (10)

▪ Having said that, accusations of sexism, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia have stalked Twyford ever since she began her career in the 1930s. (35)

▪ It could be money or information they don't want revealed. (113)

▪ So Nate's lied to me, Donna's walked, Shell was never on me side, and I got codes, maps, and a cross ticks I can't make head nor tail of. (139)

▪ The gold transported to Canada during Operation Fish was stolen by the enemy. (187)

▪ She hands me a bowl of raw fish, a plastic fork, and a sachet of green paste and genuinely expects me to tuck in. (187)

▪ For the first time in years I went to bed without a hammer under me pillow. (190)

▪ It's just, I know don't I (...) when you get what you want, you lose what you have. (190)

Multi-liners

▪ Steven, this book is a distraction. It is my job to prevent it ruining your education. (13)

▪ Mum couldn't believe so many would go to such trouble for something so meaningless, she says. But when you think about it, that book drove people from all over the world to search for something. (133)

▪ I got a lot to thank his mum and stepdad for. They sent him to private school where he learned it all. (144)

▪ Could the repercussions be so immense, powerful people want it to stay hidden. Even now, eighty years later? (147)

▪ It was nothing. Just a couple of grunts who don't want us to crack the code. (173)

▪ There are NEW messages in this version of the book. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but we may have been following long-outdated clues. (197-8)

Marisha Pessl. Film Night. 2013. Toronto: Anchor Canada/Random House, 2014.

The cover of this book warns of the extra scary content, of a family that seems cursed, headed by horror filmmaker Stanislav Cordova. The man's imaginative, gruesome films reached cult status, no longer cinema fare but adopted by underground internet cults. Investigative reporter Scott McGrath has long been curious about Cordova's bewitching reputation and reclusive personal life—to the extent that Cordova successfully sued him for libel, more or less trashing McGrath's once-proud career. Now ... the sensational news is that Cordova's twenty-four-year-old daughter, Ashley, was found dead in a sleazy abandoned Manhattan warehouse. Suicide, say the police and media. McGrath can't resist the familiar urge to uncover what is behind this shocking death, and what makes Cordova a magnet for tragic events.

The investigation attempts to piece together the last days and hours of Ashley DeRouin (her performing name as an outstanding pianist) while McGrath soon acquires assistants Hopper and Nora whether he wants them or not. Slowly, some pieces of information are gathered that fit her timeline, not making any particular sense; Ashley had been very active and alienated from her family, then dropped out of sight. The sleuths uncover her recent forays into a mental institution, borrowed pianos, black magic practices, the decadent private club where she attacked an unknown man called Spider. And is her brother Theo following the trio?

A slew of characters follow, including Marlowe, a now-decrepit actress once briefly married to "Stanny"; she provides background on Cordova's isolated and fortified home ("The Peak") and the local surroundings. But wait. Did I come this far to swallow devilish folklore beliefs?! Perhaps Cordova and Ashley did. Newspaper clippings and other images within the pages add factually convincing authenticity. From all that the trio learn, Scott struggles to understand Ashley and the famille Cordova—how much of the irrational can a human mind accept? IMO there is far too much discussion of Cordova's films ‒ totally unfamiliar to us ‒ compared to "real life" happenings, but again, it's to convince, then later, confound. Each reader, no doubt, will come to a different conclusion of where the truth lies.

Scott

▪ And yet if Cordova had been that concerned about my investigation to go to such lengths to get rid of me, what was he actually hiding―something even more explosive? (28)

▪ If I went after him again and proved he was a predator―what I'd believed in my gut—all I'd lost might come back. (39)

▪ Questioning him was always a rain dance around a campfire, requiring a delicate touch and three or four bottles of this vodka, which was more potent than than opium and doubtless had origins in some Siberian bathtub. (55)

▪ It was helpful, his insight into Ashley's character. It had allowed her to come briefly into focus, revealing her to be a kind of ferocious avenger, a persona entirely in keeping with the way she played music. (78)

▪ That was women for you—always morphing. One minute they were helpless, needing shelter and English muffins, the next they were ruthlessly bending you to their will like you were a piece of sheet metal. (95)

▪ Cordova was a creative eccentric, holed up in an isolated estate, basically a petri dish for cultivating the weird and outlandish. (243)

▪ At long last, a decent break—a minute crack to slip my fingers into to pry the whole thing wide open: the man Ashley had been searching for in the days before she died. (358)

▪ The world's certainty and truth had revealed a fault line. (426)

▪ Was that what I was hearing, what I sensed beside me? Ashley? (468)

Nora

▪ "For someone who investigates, you're blind," Nora said. (387)

▪ "If I get zapped and it's my time to go, I just want to say I love you both and these times have been the best in my life." (433)

▪ "It's easy to be yourself in the dark. Ever noticed?" (222)

▪ "You think that's what the Cordovas are hiding? That they're all witches or something?" (243)

▪ "But she knew it was finally happening. This transformation. She knew the devil was coming for her at last." (387)

Others

▪ "The notes weren't played," he went on. "They were poured from a Grecian urn. ... None of us could believe a mere child could play in such a way." (53)

▪ "The man blurred fiction and fact. His art and his life were the same." (493)

▪ "They, along with countless people in the town, were using his property for sadistic rituals." (371)