I’m in shock after reading Janice Hallett’s The Examiner, in part due of how creative and immersive it is and in part because of all the layers and how they culminate in a wild, tension-filled conclusion. I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this dark academia crime novel, but it certainly wasn’t that!

Told in emails, text messages, and essays, this innovative and addicting read follows a group of students in an art master’s program that goes dangerously awry. Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one. There’s Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience in art practice aside from running his family’s gallery. Patrick runs an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified. Finally, there is the examiner, the man hired to grade students’ final works—an art installation for a local cloud-based solutions company that may have an ulterior agenda—and who, in sifting through final essays, texts, and message boards, warns that someone is in danger…or already dead. And nothing about this course has been left up to chance. With her trademark “unique and exhilarating” voice, Janice Hallett weaves a fresh and mind-bending mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.

I can attest to the fact that this is a dark academia that just keeps getting murkier, the characters more and more ruthless, and their actions more and more sinister as the information comes to light. There were times I wasn’t sure who I hated most or who wasn’t in on something, and to be fair that’s the whole point of laying out the novel as Janice Hallett did – more on that masterful storytelling method later. These characters are all menaces in my book, and I admit I lost sight of their motives and reasonings as the layers grew more complicated.

By using non-traditional modes of information fitting for the story’s setting, characters, and the contemporary technology of our age, it made this novel incredibly unique, interesting, and engaging to read. Things felt informal and weighted in a setting that should feel the opposite, and it added to the atmosphere and tension of the novel greatly. As an academic, I felt so jaded reading this and it honestly made me infuriated in a good way – there is no way this would have worked in real life, so I am happy that the complete breach of academic integrity and purpose was fictional. I don’t know a book that has made me more angry about postgraduate studies, but I am unlikely to forget how that I have read it!

The Examiner is a thrilling adventure, and a novel dotted with great prose, exceptional storytelling techniques, and a cast of characters I felt polarised by from the jump. The Examiner treads the line between dark academia and crime fiction brilliantly, and I look forward to reading more of Janice Hallett’s work later in the year.