About the Book

Six students. One murder. Your time starts now.

At Royal Hastings University, a new Multimedia Art master’s course has just begun, and already the six very different entrants seem to be setting each other’s work on fire, sabotaging their classmates, and swapping secrets in chat rooms and WhatsApp. Then comes the final assignment —an art installation for a corporate client. By the time the external examiner arrives to assess the coursework, he’s convinced one of the students has been murdered and that the others might be covering up. Told through emails, texts, online message boards, assignments, and reports, the novel invites the reader to assemble the clues – to see which students are lying, when they are, and what they’re hiding. It’s equal parts academic satire, art-world drama, and intricate puzzle-box mystery, all delivered with Hallett’s trademark wit and structural cleverness.

About the Author

Janice Hallett is a British novelist, former journalist, and screenwriter whose fiction has quickly become known for its inventive formats and twisty plotting. Her debut novel, The Appeal (2021), made a huge splash, and subsequent works such as The Twyford Code (2022) and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels (2023) further cemented her reputation for playful, high-concept mysteries. With The Examiner, she turns her attention to the academic and art-education worlds, mining the tensions in postgraduate life, creative ambition, and the pressure to perform – while still delivering a compelling whodunit structure. For readers who enjoy puzzles embedded in modern life, compelling characters you want to mistrust, and formal innovation in the mystery genre, this is a graet novel to read.