The Monogram Murders
The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
Ratings9
Average rating3.3
15
The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
Ratings9
Average rating3.3
Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one's mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim.
Series
5 primary booksNew Hercule Poirot Mysteries is a 5-book series with 5 primary works first released in 2014 with contributions by Sophie Hannah.
Reviews with the most likes.
The first official Hercule Poirot pastiche. Writing in another author's style is hard to do and the author does not succeed here. Poirot is too talky and too British and not much happens. Skip it.
Hercule Poirot is having a quiet dinner in his favorite London coffeehouse when he encounters a young woman who is terrified of being murdered. Later that day Poirot hears of a murder at an upscale London hotel and accompanies the Scotland Yard detective staying in his boardinghouse to the scene of the crime. There he learns of a mysterious clue...a monogrammed cuff link left in the mouth of each of the three victims. He can't help but think that the young woman he met earlier that night may be the murder's fourth victim...
I personally really enjoyed this book, though I know it's taken some hard hits from other reviewers and even some critics. I didn't go into this expecting the writing to be anything like Christie's writing because - gasp - Sophie Hannah isn't Agatha Christie! Of course the writing won't be a replica of the original Poirot works. Hannah does, however, capture Poirot's personality - his disdain over a lack of imagination in his detective partner, his excitement when he's put two clues together, and his pompous explanations at the close of the book. Hannah also successfully captures the importance of motive and psychology to the plot. She is able to show us both the morality and the darkness of the characters in her story in a way that was vitally important in all of Christie's work.
In the end, the Monogram Murders should not be looked at as a “continuation” of the Poirot library, but rather a new interpretation of an old familiar character. The puzzling twists and turns of the plot, the voices of the characters, and the seeming impossibility of the mystery are all echoes of the Christie I love, with the fabulous writing of Hannah to pull it all together.
