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Barth also challenged literary conventions in his 1979 epistolary novel “Letters,” in which characters from his first six novels wrote to each other, and he inserted himself as a character as well.

Part of the problem is it’s an epistolary novel, a genre that’s effective because what characters hide is as revelatory as what they reveal.

Though the 1940 original featured some soon-to-be standards by Rodgers and Hart — “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” chief among them — its book by John O’Hara, based on his epistolary novel and New Yorker stories, didn’t match them in tone or dramatic serviceability.

An epistolary novel, told by Detective Inspector Alan Hope in affectionate letters home to his wife, it explores the mysterious murder of conductor Sir Noel Grampian, shot dead during a performance of Strauss’ “A Hero’s Life.”

This debut mystery from British author Hallett is a kick: a whodunit epistolary novel, in which a pair of young lawyers sort through a mountain of emails, messages and letters to try to sort out a mysterious death in an amateur theatrical troupe.