She’s the award-winning screen writer who waded into authorship, only to find herself heading back to TV.
Thriller writer Janice Hallett’s chart-topping first novel The Appeal (2021) and her second The Twyford Code (2022) have both been optioned for TV, the debut with ABC (Disney in the US) while the second has still to be announced.
Now with her third nail-biting novel, The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels, just out, a fourth, The Examiner, under way, and a deal done for a further four books, her new career as an author seems assured. She’s even been described as an “heir” to Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.
Hallett, 54, who will be at the Topping & Co bookshops in Edinburgh and St Andrews on February 22 and 23 respectively admits to being surprised by her success. Speaking from the West London home she shares with partner Gary Stringer, 61, she confesses to P.S.: “When I began The Appeal my screen career had dwindled and I started the novel without a commission in the hope that I would kick-start something. I didn’t even think it would be published. I thought it would languish in my drawer forever. It started as a script so it’s a complete coincidence really.”
And the writer’s writer seems gobsmacked by the suggestion she’s in Christie’s league. “I’m not sure it’s true,” she says. “Agatha Christie might be turning in her grave, or perhaps she’d be pleased, who knows? It’s a great honour to be compared to her.”
The former magazine editor and speech writer for the Cabinet Office and Home Office, who in 2011 won the award for Best New Screenplay at the British Independent Film Festival for her first feature film Retreat, revealed the inspiration for her latest release was also a script about a fictitious cult she dreamed up years ago.
In the novel, everyone knows the story of the Alperton Angels: the cult-like group who were convinced one of their member’s babies was the antichrist, and they had a divine mission to kill it – until the baby’s mother called the police. The Angels committed suicide rather than go to prison, and mother and baby disappeared into the care system.
Fast forward two decades when the novel’s true-crime author Amanda Bailey is writing a book on the Angels and wants to find the now grown baby. But she has competition with a rival author Oliver Menzies. They decide to work together but the truth they unearth is far more weird and sinister than they could have imagined.
Hallett, who dove deep into research about the care system and the psychology of cults to pen the novel, says: “It was inspired from some of my own experiences as a journalist, I let it take me. It started off as quite satirical but as I let the characters lead me, it became much darker and thoughtful. It is about vulnerability and leadership.”
The result is a stunning, read. “I couldn’t have written the novels I have when I was young. I did write the obligatory teenage-full-of-angst novel. It never saw the light of day,” she laughs.
“Thank goodness there was no internet then or I would have put it online. It is very embarrassing.”
Janice Hallett, The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels, Viper, £16.99
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