Roderick Tanner QC presents a file of information to two of his students, Olufemi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, with the challenge ‘see what you think’.
The collection of recovered e-mails, text messages, transcripts, and assorted printed material is incomplete but in rough chronological order. At the heart of the correspondence, initially, are the plans of the Fairway Players for their next amateur production, which will be Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.
The Players are led by the wealthy Hayward family. Patriarch Martin is chair and director in chief; his wife, Helen, is secretary and perennial leading lady. Their son, James, and daughter, Paige, both take key roles. Of the rest of the group, Sarah Jane MacDonald is to the fore as a serial organiser and favoured gofer, while Isabel Beck is no more than a willing wannabe.
However, for this production, events off stage are distracting the Haywards. James’ wife is expecting twins, and news has broken that Paige’s daughter, Poppy, is seriously ill with a rare form of cancer. Expensive private treatment abroad offers her best hope. The Players respond by setting up a funding appeal, the proceeds of All My Sons will be donated and further events are planned.
Despite all this, the show must go on. And Issy Beck introduces some new blood into the cast – new arrivals and health workers like her, Samantha and Kel Greenwood.
Events unfold. Olufami and Charlotte periodically exchange notes, which help to keep track of the complex relationships revealed by the file, and Tanner drops in the odd additional nugget to help them (and us) along. The students realise this case is for real, not an exercise. Someone has been convicted of murder, and Tanner is working on an appeal.
It makes for compulsive reading as message follows message, unfolding events that go well beyond the play. The plotting is deceptively complex with sufficient misleads and blind alleys to keep the solution to the murder hidden in plain sight.
It is an unusual
vehicle for a whodunnit but one that works very well.
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