My Book of the Month Choice
What a delight! An absolute delight!
Hannah takes a break from her gripping psychological thrillers to present a Poirot mystery that could possibly have come from Christie herself.
I’m a fan of Hercule and his fussy ways and The Monogram Murders includes them all with one startling exception. No tisane! Instead, he discovers the joy of coffee and, indeed, it’s in the tiny crooked-wall establishment of Pleasant’s Coffee House at just after half past seven on a Thursday evening in February that the mystery begins.
In the absence of the faithful Hastings, we meet Edward Catchpool, a young Scotland Yard detective, who fills Arthur’s shoes to perfection.
My Amazon Link The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery
Then there’s the usual strange characters from a small village in the English countryside. You know them. You know how to pick up clues too but there’s possibly a surfeit of clues and an over abundance of red herrings. I could be a nit-picker and say that Poirot’s little grey cells were working with the power of Stephen Hawking’s and I could add that Hercule seems to have overcome his usual humility, but why would I tear little holes in a lovely book that gave me a great deal of pleasure?
Sophie Hannah obviously had tremendous fun writing this book, commissioned by the Christie Estate, and I had tremendous fun reading it.
It’s not Agatha Christie, it’s Sophie Hannah. And she’s good.
