"A pleasing brain-teaser" - review of THE KILLER QUESTION

THE KILLER QUESTION by Janice Hallett (Viper Books, January 2026)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Mal and Sue Eastwood were once the kindly landlords of a local village pub, The Case is Altered. They ran a weekly pub quiz and were well liked by their customers and colleagues alike, always happy to lend a helping hand. But now The Case stands empty, its windows boarded up. What could have happened to Mal and Sue?

Did The Case close because it was failing? Was it because of the body pulled from the nearby river? Or perhaps it had something to do with the quiz? It had always been a quiet affair, five teams of locals battling it out for a small prize pot. Until one day a mysterious new team of outsiders arrived, and started winning every round...

Former journo and British government speechwriter Janice Hallett burst onto the crime (writing) scene during the pandemic with The Appeal, a modern take on classic ‘puzzle-style’ murder mysteries, with an epistolary twist. Told in epistolary style, via letters, emails, and messages, readers were invited to solve the mystery alongside two lawyers looking for ‘the real killer’ among many case documents.

She’s continued the ‘found documents’ format through a string of bestsellers, and now in her fifth novel The Killer Question, it is WhatsApp messages and group texts, transcripts of police recordings, and emails pitching a true crime doco to Netflix that contain the clues, suspects, and red herrings. 

Along with sheets from a weekly quiz night at ‘The Case is Altered’, a local village pub down a quiet country lane run by former coppers Mal and Sue Eastwood. But who killed the man in the orange puffy jacket whose body emerged from the nearby river, after he was thrown out of a quiz night by Mal as a notorious quiz cheat? And who are the Shadow Knights, the mysterious team of seemingly elite quizzers who turn up out of nowhere and start winning every week, upsetting some locals?

With The Killer Question, Hallett crafts another pleasing brain-teaser. While there may be some wee pacing wobbles, and at times the conceit threatens to overwhelm our connection to characters, Hallett deftly brings her mystery all together very cleverly at the end.

This review was first published in a January issue of the New Zealand Listener magazine

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.