Author: Sophie Hannah

#BookReview: No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> Bookish Rant or Raves> C- Reviews
#BookReview: No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie HannahNo One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery
Pages: 406
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The twistiest murder mystery you are ever likely to read?

A story about a family that does the unthinkable in order to save the life of one of its beloved members?

Both? Or something else altogether?

You'll have to read until the very last word in order to find out…

You think it will never happen to the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm afraid…'

Sally Lambert is also afraid, and desperate enough to consider the unthinkable. Is it really, definitely, impossible to escape from this horror? Maybe not. There's always something you can do, right?

Of course, no one would ever do this particular something – except the Lamberts, who might have to.

No one has ever gone this far. Until Sally decides that the Lamberts will…

My Review:

I don’t normally start by talking about what other reviewers have said, but it’s brilliant and possibly the best short summary I’m going to find OR come up with myself. Because the reviewer who said that this “definitely seems to be a Marmite book” was spot on.

For those readers on my side of the pond who didn’t spend a childhood watching Masterpiece Theater or Doctor Who or reading a lot of British set AND published books, Marmite is a “savoury spread” that is popular in Britain. Vegemite is Marmite’s Aussie cousin. In Britain – and elsewhere – Marmite is shorthand for something that is definitely an acquired taste. Something that people either love or hate but that no one is neutral about unless they just haven’t tried it yet.

I haven’t tried Marmite, but I have read this book. And it’s definitely an acquired taste. It may be loosely based, sorta/kinda and more in theme and presentation than actual story, on The Rose and the Yew Tree, written by Agatha Christie under her Mary Westmacott pen name, but it isn’t really Christie-esq at all.

On the one hand – and do I ever need a lot of hands for this one – the idea at the heart of the story is, well, heartwarming and potentially heartbreaking. Sally Lambert’s beloved dog, the adorable Westie named Champ, has been falsely accused of mauling teenager Tess Gavey. The Gaveys and the Lamberts are bitter enemies, so it is not outside the realms of possibility – or even probability, that Tess is lying. Because she’s a lying liar who lies just like the rest of the Gaveys.

Because of the false accusation, poor Champ is in very real danger of being put down as a ‘dangerous’ animal. Which is where the plot both thickens AND goes off the rails and I start needing all the hands.

On one of my other hands, the Lamberts go on the run, of course taking Champ with them, to protect him from a fate that is literally death which he doesn’t deserve. And on another hand, there’s the entire bonkers plot that results in the death of the entire Gavey family.

In the middle, Champ becomes the darling of social media and a cause célèbre celebrity, the Gaveys are exposed as the scum they are, and seemingly the entire world ends up on Champ’s side.

While surrounding all of that, there’s a framing subplot about a dirt-stained kicked-around manuscript in a box that claims to be the story of how the Gaveys got done in by a bit of mindbending hypnosis conducted by the ghost of the Lamberts’ previous dog.

It’s a lot to take in, a lot to swallow, and a LOT of readers are going to think it’s Marmite. No one seems to be neutral about it, including this reader. This is a case where your reading mileage is guaranteed to vary.

Escape Rating C-: This one is way too bonkers for me. It’s not just that the plot is bonkers, although it is. Still there’s a part of me that thinks I would also go entirely too far to save one of my furbabies from an unjust accusation. That part I actually get, even if Sally Lambert does go WAY over the top.

But the whole story is carried just that bit too far and then some. All of the story’s narrators are unreliable, they’re all leaving out the key facts all the time and some of them are outright impossible. I may have disliked the Gaveys more than I did the Lamberts but I’m not all that fond of the Lamberts either. Except for Champ. Champ is a delight from beginning to end and I AM happy that he’s better than alright at the end.

His people, on yet another hand, may have gotten better than they deserve out of the whole thing. By the time I got to that big twist at the end, I wasn’t sure I cared all that much. Except, again, for Champ.

The framing story about the manuscript in the box has been done oodles of times, and it’s always a bit out there on the believability scale, but this one literally takes the cake. Quite possibly with marmite on it.

All the characters are caricatures in one way or another – if not multiply so – and it was all a bit too much. I picked this up because I’ve been following the author’s Poirot series. I enjoyed the first one, but that series has gotten less and less interesting as it’s gone on and nostalgia will only carry a reader so far. Because the author is so popular, I was hoping that something of her own would help me understand why she’s so popular, but if so, this was the wrong book to start with.

This reads like it’s an experiment in one or multiple ways. It also reminds me a bit of Janice Hallett’s Appeal series in the archness of its tone but not in its execution. I think those are also Marmite books, but it’s a version of Marmite that seems to go down more smoothly for more readers than What the Lamberts Have Done. Including this reader.

#BookReview: The Last Death of the Year by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
#BookReview: The Last Death of the Year by Sophie Hannah and Agatha ChristieThe Last Death of the Year (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #6) by Sophie Hannah, Agatha Christie
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #6
Pages: 288
Published by William Morrow on October 23, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The brilliant Belgian detective rings in the New Year with a chilling murder investigation on a Greek island in this all-new holiday mystery from Sophie Hannah, author of Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night.
New Year’s Eve, 1932. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool arrive on the tiny Greek island of Lamperos to celebrate the holiday with what turns out to be a rather odd community of locals living in a dilapidated house. A dark sense of foreboding overshadows the beautiful island getaway when the guests play a New Year’s Resolutions game after dinner and one written resolution gleefully threatens to perform “the last and first death of the year.”
Hours later, one of the home’s residents is found dead on the terrace.
In light of the shocking murder, Poirot reveals to Catchpool the real reason he’s brought him to the island—the life of another community member has been threatened. Now both men resolve to ensure that the first murder will be the last.

My Review:

From a certain point of view, The Last Death of the Year is a fairly typical Poirot story – at least in his later years and certainly in this series continuation of the late and much lamented Agatha Christie’s most popular detective’s investigations.

Poirot has dragged his current best friend and protegee away from England for the Christmas holidays in what is obviously a bit of a scam on Poirot’s part. As is usual, and because he really does like things this way, Poirot is keeping all the important cards close to his impeccably tailored vest.

Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool doesn’t catch on until they arrive at the House of Perpetual Welcome on the tiny Greek island of Lamperos. Poirot has lured Catchpool by dangling the house’s proximity to the Mediterranean Sea,  as he knows that his friend has discovered a penchant for swimming in the ocean or closest equivalent as often as possible.

That Catchpool is more than happy to have an excuse to be ANYWHERE other than England – and in proximity to his overbearing mother – during the holidays is also well-known to Poirot after their investigation in the previous book, Silent Night.

Catchpool would have gone along with Poirot to Greece if he had been presented with the truth from the outset, but that is not Poirot’s way. So Catchpool is only a bit put out by his friend’s misdirection.

Howsomever, he is a LOT put out by the characters inhabiting the House of Perpetual Welcome, a place which may have lived up to its name by welcoming one or more people that it really shouldn’t have.

A fact that is made entirely too clear on New Year’s Day, with the discovery that one of their number was murdered in the night – and all too obviously by another one of their number. Precisely as was predicted the evening before, when their little game of anonymous New Year’s resolutions revealed that one member of the household had plans to cause “the last and first death of the year” sometime that very night.

And clearly did.

Escape Rating C: I think my hand is stuck in the bag of potato chips and I can’t get it out. At least, that’s my explanation for why I keep picking up this series and manage to finish each book, no matter how annoying I find the story and especially the characters.

I do, in fact, like the character that the author has created for her continuation of Hercule Poirot’s adventures in detection. Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool combines the best – or at least the most useful – parts of Captain Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp. Catchpool has the official cachet of being a Scotland Yard Inspector like Japp, without Japp’s longer experience with both crime and Poirot, a combination which allows Japp to treat Poirot as an equal – and even a bit of vice versa – in a way that the young Catchpool cannot and rightfully does not.

At the same time, Catchpool exhibits a bit of the same naivete and even outright innocence that Hastings possesses, allowing Poirot to use him as a sounding board and a foil that Poirot can demonstrate his own genius to. However, Hastings, at least in the David Suchet TV series, often seemed naive to the point of outright fecklessness, where Catchpool is merely young and a bit awed by the famous detective. Hastings just gets older – as Poirot does – while Catchpool seems to be catching up with Poirot a bit. Not that he ever thinks he’s Poirot’s equal or is ever going to be, but he does seem to be coming into himself and his own capabilities in a way that bodes well for his survival at Scotland Yard.

(One often wondered whether Hastings was auditioning for the part of Bertie Wooster, and it’s not something that wears well over time.)

But speaking of characters, the cast of potential murder suspects and victims at the House of Perpetual Welcome is every bit as much of a complete shambles as the house itself. It’s not just that every single one of them is a hot mess, it’s that they are all hot messes in histrionic ways, they’re all lying as they breathe, they’re all over-the-top high strung drama queens, and the raison d’etre for the quasi-religious community at the house is an absolute farce of pure bunkum.

That the method of ‘warning’ about the murder and the game it was part of reminded me a bit of Ink, Ribbon, Red was not a help. It set me up, not for figuring things out but for thinking that the process was going to be a case of tedious, overwrought misdirection. And it was.

I’m starting to rant, so I’ll stop. By this point, you’ve probably gotten the idea. OTOH, I can’t really recommend this, and on the other hand, if you’re already hooked – which apparently I am – it’s just engaging enough that I can’t get my hand out of that bag – even if the only thing stopping me from throwing this one against the wall in a fit of incoherent pique was that I’d damage my iPad in the process and it’s just not worth it.

Nevertheless, I might still be back for the next one, whenever that turns out to be. Or I might manage to get my hand out of the bag by then. We’ll see, two or three years from now. Unlike more positive reviews, where I really am already looking forward to the next book, this time I can definitely wait for whatever, whenever, if-ever, comes next in the series.

Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie HannahHercule Poirot's Silent Night (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #5) by Sophie Hannah, Agatha Christie
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #5
Pages: 384
Published by William Morrow on October 24, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot – legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice – puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery.
CAN HERCULE POIROT SOLVE A BAFFLING MURDER MYSTERY IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS?
It’s 19 December 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are called to investigate the murder of a man in the apparent safe haven of a Norfolk hospital ward. Catchpool’s mother, the irrepressible Cynthia, insists that Poirot stays in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while Poirot solves the case. Cynthia’s friend Arnold is soon to be admitted to that same hospital and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why.
Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders, if he is to escape from this nightmare scenario and get home in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, someone else – someone utterly ruthless – also has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot . . .

My Review:

Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool and his friend and mentor Hercule Poirot are just settling in to a two-week staycation (even if that term had not been invented yet) in London, staying in Poirot’s rather palatial apartment at Whitehaven Mansions, attended by Poirot’s inestimable butler, George, for the duration of the holidays.

Catchpool, in particular, was determined to spend his Christmas hols with his friend Poirot and absolutely NOT with his mother, the overbearing Cynthia Catchpool. The moment Cynthia lies her way into Poirot’s office, we understand EXACTLY why Catchpool intended to spend his holidays as far away from his mother as he could manage.

Because Cynthia Catchpool is the perfect example of another term that hadn’t been invented yet. She was a ‘helicopter parent’ long before that term was even on the horizon, someone who swoops into her son’s life – or frankly anyone’s life – and absolutely does not listen to a single thing she has to say.

She is determined that Catchpool and Poirot will return with her to the  blustery Norfolk coast in late December to solve a murder and spend Christmas with her and the friends she’s visiting,and will not take ‘NO’ for an answer, no matter how many times it’s shouted at her.

But when she describes the circumstances of the murder to Poirot, Catchpool knows instantly that he is at least somewhat doomed. Christmas itself may be saved, but Poirot gets a look in his eye that Catchpool knows all too well – that something about this case has caught the attention of Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’.

What fascinates Poirot so much that he is willing to disrupt his holiday plans? The man who has been murdered is someone who could not possibly have been intended to be murdered. So why is he dead?

Poirot must know. He must solve the case. Before the truly execrable cuisine served at Frellingsloe House causes him to die from starvation. Or poison.

Escape Rating B-: Looking back at my reviews of the previous books in this New Hercule Poirot series by Sophie Hannah (The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket, The Mystery of Three Quarters, and The Killings at Kingfisher Hill) I’ve had mixed feelings about pretty much all the books in the series, and this latest entry is absolutely no exception.

I’m beginning to think that the problem is that I like the concept more than the execution (ahem, pun not exactly intended but…) and that’s true in this entry in the series as well. Although I did find this one more readable than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, I ended this book feeling every bit as sorry for Catchpool this time, if not a bit more, than I did then.

Because this time he’s very much put upon by Poirot AND his mother. Who I fully confess I hated as a character from her very first appearance to the point where I mentally cringed every time she appeared on the page. Her overbearing helicopter parenting, no matter how anachronistic that term, was a trial from beginning to end. The story did need her gossiping nature, I’m just not sure it needed her utter assholishness about it. Or at least I didn’t need it considering that she did not get nearly the bashing she deserved.

The case itself went to some interesting psychological places, as it turned out to be wrapped around the idea of reinventing oneself and how deeply one can get consumed by burying that past so completely that anything that touches on it causes a psychological break. I liked that Poirot and Catchpool had differing interpretations of those causes, particularly as Poirot’s reasoning felt more germane to the times while Catchpool’s was perhaps a bit anachronistic but more humane.

A lot of the ‘action’ of the story, particularly the ‘fair play’ aspects of the mystery and its resolution, were handled as more ‘telling’ than showing, as the two detectives were often working separately, and only caught up at irregular intervals through meticulous reports – which is how the reader gets caught up as well.

I’m left with a bag of mixed feelings about this one. I liked it better than The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, not as much as The Mystery of Three Quarters and Closed Casket, but still enjoying the concept as a whole. We’ll see how I’m feeling about the whole thing if Poirot and Catchpool catch another case a year or two from now.

Review: The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
Review: The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by Sophie HannahThe Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #4
Pages: 288
Published by William Morrow on September 15, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

“I was thrilled to see Poirot in such very, very good hands.”— Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
The world’s most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot—the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile—returns in a delectably twisty mystery.
Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. There is one strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.
On the coach, a distressed woman leaps up, demanding to disembark. She insists that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. A seat-swap is arranged, and the rest of the journey passes without incident. But Poirot has a bad feeling about it, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered in the Devonports' home with a note that refers to ‘the seat that you shouldn’t have sat in’.
Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And can Poirot find the real murderer in time to save an innocent woman from the gallows?

My Review:

This is the 4th book in the New Hercule Poirot mystery series, and I have to say that the longer this new Poirot series goes on, the more I sympathize with Inspector Edward Catchpool.

Not that there were many sympathetic characters in this particular entry in the series. Not even Poirot. And that’s not a good thing for a story where he is the main character.

Not that a book can’t have a frustrating or unappealing central character, but that’s not who or what Poirot is supposed to be. His quirks – his many, many quirks – are supposed to be familiar and endearing. And they usually are.

I say this as someone whose enduring memories of Poirot are from the portrayal by David Suchet and not from Christie’s original work, of which I’ve read a few but not exhaustively. It’s Suchet’s portrait of the little Belgian detective as a quirky genius that sticks in the mind. Not just for the stories and the settings, which were marvelous, but for the twinkle in the eye that his Poirot seemed to have, particularly when his idiosyncrasies were otherwise at their most annoying.

It’s something I’ve seen in the previous books in this series, and I certainly heard Suchet’s voice uttering many of Poirot’s lines in the earlier books. But this time the illusion fell apart.

The device for these new stories is that Poirot has taken on the role of mentor to a young Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Edward Catchpool. It’s very different from the role he occupied in regards to his original partners in either the books or the TV series, Captain Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Inspector Japp. While none of those mentioned had nearly Poirot’s genius, they all seemed to be his contemporaries in age, giving those relationships some level of equality that the young Catchpool cannot aspire to.

And this is a case where Poirot is at his most mysterious and impenetrable, deriding Catchpool at every turn while withholding the information that the man needs to even begin to figure out what is going on. The scene where Catchpool is freezing in a swimming pool while Poirot insists that he make his report before permitting him to get out of the pool and dry off, meanwhile telling Catchpool how stupid he is to be swimming in the first place seemed a bridge too far for even Poirot’s insensitivity to anything but the processes of his “little grey cells”.

It does not help that in this particular mystery, none of the potential murderers are remotely sympathetic – and most of their motives and actions don’t make nearly enough sense. They’re not quite as terrible as the Thrombey family in Knives Out, but they’re not far off that mark, either.

And the Thrombey family, as hateful as they were, generally had motives that were both clear and comprehendible. Reprehensible, but understandable. That didn’t feel true in this story. It wasn’t just that I didn’t like the suspects, as that the reasons they acted as they did just did not ring true.

The rich may be different than you and me, and the past may be another country where they do things differently, but human beings are just not this different.

Escape Rating C: This may be a “fair play” mystery, where the reader has all of the same clues as the detective, but it felt like neither fair nor play. The only character I felt for, or who felt like a plausible human being, was the much-put-upon Catchpool, who is all too aware of the situation that he has been placed in, caught between his superintendent’s belief in Poirot’s detective genius and Poirot’s need to expound that genius at someone he believes needs his expert guidance. Not that Catchpool doesn’t need seasoning and experience, but all I did in this outing was feel sorry for him.

Obviously, this was not my favorite in this series. I found the others charming and comforting, reading like continuations of the TV series. I enjoyed them enough that I’ll be back for the next in the series in the hopes that it returns to its original form.

Review: The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie HannahThe Mystery of Three Quarters (The New Hercule Poirot Mystery #3) by Sophie Hannah
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: New Hercule Poirot #3
Pages: 368
Published by William Morrow on August 28, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The world's most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot--the legendary star of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express and most recently The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket--returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in the London of 1930.

Returning home from a luncheon, Hercule Poirot is met at his door by an imperious woman who introduces herself as Sylvia Rule. "How dare you? How dare you send me such a letter?" Ignoring his denials, Mrs. Rule insists that she received a missive claiming he had proof she murdered a man named Barnabas Pandy and advising her to confess her crime to the police. Threatening the perplexed Poirot with a lawsuit, she leaves in a huff.

Minutes later, a rather disheveled man named John McCrodden appears. "I got your letter accusing me of the murder of Barnabas Pandy." Calmly, Poirot again rebuts the charge. Each insisting they are victims of a conspiracy, Mrs. Rule and Mr. McCrodden deny knowing who Pandy is.

The next day, two more strangers proclaim their innocence and provide illuminating details. Miss Annabel Treadway tells Poirot that Barnabas Pandy was her grandfather. But he was not murdered; his death was an accident. Hugo Dockerill also knows of Pandy, and he heard the old man fell asleep in his bath and drowned.

Why did someone send letters in Poirot's name accusing people of murder? If Pandy's death was an accident, why charge foul play? It is precisely because he is the great Hercule Poirot that he would never knowingly accuse an innocent person of a crime. Someone is trying to make mischief, and the instigator wants Poirot involved.

Engaging the help of Edward Catchpool, his Scotland Yard policeman friend, Poirot begins to dig into the investigation, exerting his little grey cells to solve an elaborate puzzle involving a tangled web of relationships, scandalous secrets, and past misdeeds.

My Review:

This is now the third of Sophie Hannah’s New Hercule Poirot mysteries (after The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket), and there is one thing they all have in common. Actually there are several things they have in common, but the one that strikes this reader first is the sheer, compulsive readability of this series. Whether one considers them continuations of the original, homages to it, or a combination of the two, they are all absolutely brimming with can’t-put-it-down-ness. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. All day.

Another factor that is common to all three books is the new author’s invented “Watson” for Poirot, Inspector Edward Catchpool. Unlike poor Japp in the original series, Catchpool is a young detective, early in his career. While he sometimes (often!) chafes at being caught between his Super’s orders and Poirot’s “requests”, he is aware that he needs Poirot.

One of the gratifying parts of their relationship is the way that Poirot also seems to be aware that he needs Catchpool, and not just to provide official sanction. Poirot is always the lead partner, but there is a partnership developing.

The case in The Mystery of Three Quarters feels very Poirot in that it is convoluted in the extreme. Someone has sent letters, signed by Poirot, accusing the recipients of murder. The four recipients of those letters are various shades of indignant and perplexed. Poirot is incensed, because he did not send the letters – and their grammar and writing style is absolutely appalling. Instead he discovers that the supposed murder victim surely died by accident, and that his purported murderers don’t seem to have much relationship to each other – or even to the late, more-or-less lamented Barnabas Pandy.

It’s up to Poirot, with the able assistance of Inspector Catchpool, to figure out, not so much whodunit, but whydunit, before somebody else gets done.

Escape Rating B: It’s the must-keep-reading-ness aspect of this book that sticks with me. The case, as bizarre as it is (and Poirot’s cases were often a bit “out there”) pulls the reader along from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph and doesn’t let go until the end.

In other words, The Mystery of Three Quarters is a whole lot of fun to read.

Three books into this “new” series, I still feel as if it is more of a continuation of the TV portrayal of Poirot than the original books – or perhaps it’s just that Poirot’s extreme quirks feel even more quirky when one visualizes David Suchet’s performance than they must have when originally published. I always hear Suchet’s voice while reading this new series. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

One thing that stands out from The Mystery of Three Quarters is the utter wackiness of the entire case. As a device to get Poirot involved, the fraudulent letters are a stroke of both absurdity and genius. No one could resist getting to the bottom of the whole mess, and certainly Poirot is incapable of letting someone else take his name in vain. He can’t resist, which was the whole point.

Also the killer’s mistake, but of course that’s all part of the big reveal at the end.

One of the things that surprised me about the entire farrago was just how much of Poirot’s resolution turned out to be based on slightly far-fetched assumptions about motives and emotions. There’s not a whole lot of forensic evidence in this case until the very end. Instead it’s all about what people thought and how they felt and why they subsequently acted the way they did.

It all gallops along brilliantly as its going on, but looking back I’m not quite sure it all hangs together. But still, it was a terrific ride while it was happening, and I enjoyed every page of it.

I’m very happy that the author is continuing this “collaboration” with the late Dame Agatha Christie, and I look forward to more installments of Hercule Poirot’s “new” mysteries!

But I still like the UK covers better for this series. It’s Poirot. It’s the 1930s. Art deco is the right look and feel. Just run with it!

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Review: Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah and Agatha ChristieClosed Casket (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries #2) by Sophie Hannah, Agatha Christie
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: New Hercule Poirot #2
Pages: 320
Published by William Morrow on September 6th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The world's most famous detective returns in this ingenious, stylish, and altogether delicious mystery from the author of the instant bestseller The Monogram Murders ("I was thrilled" -- Gillian Flynn).
"What I intend to say to you will come as a shock..."
With these words, Lady Athelinda Playford -- one of the world's most beloved children's authors -- springs a surprise on the lawyer entrusted with her will. As guests arrive for a party at her Irish mansion, Lady Playford has decided to cut off her two children without a penny . . . and leave her vast fortune to someone else: an invalid who has only weeks to live.
Among Lady Playford's visitors are two strangers: the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited -- until Poirot begins to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murder. But why does she seem so determined to provoke a killer? And why -- when the crime is committed despite Poirot's best efforts to stop it -- does the identity of the victim make no sense at all?
Addictive, ferociously clever, and packed with clues, wit, and murder, Closed Casket is a triumph from the author whose work is "as tricky as anything written by Agatha Christie" (Alexander McCall Smith, The New York Times Book Review).

My Review:

monogram murders by sophie hannah and agatha christieJust as in last year’s Poirot, The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket provides an extremely convoluted but incredibly fun trip back to the world of Agatha Christie’s most famous detective, the eccentric Belgian Hercule Poirot.

This case is somewhat of a direct followup to the one in The Monogram Murders. While none of the victims or suspects in that case reappear, Poirot’s young police friend and official cover, Edward Catchpool, is an integral part of this case as well.

And poor Catchpool, every time someone meets him, they refer back to that dreadful case. The solution was not dreadful at all, but Catchpool is all too aware that he did not exactly cover himself in glory, and all of the reporting on that case made his situation even worse. It was Poirot’s case, and the entire world knows it, much to Catchpool’s chagrin.

Which makes his discovery that Poirot has also been invited to Lady Athelinda Playford’s house party in Ireland both welcome and galling at the same time. Catchpool wants to solve whatever is about to happen all on his own, but he is aware that he still needs Poirot’s help. And he’s also just plain glad to see the irascible little fellow, especially as the other occupants of the household are less than agreeable. To say the least. Catchpool and Poirot have been dropped into the middle of a family melodrama, where everyone seems to be showing their worst side to everyone else.

Of course somebody ends up dead. And of course it is up to Poirot and Catchpool to figure out whodunnit.

Escape Rating B: This one is every bit as much fun as The Monogram Murders, and feels very much in the style of the later seasons of the Poirot series. Not only because Inspector Japp, Captain Hastings and Miss Lemon no longer seem to be members of Poirot’s inner circle, but also because the original mover of events, Lady Athelinda Playford, bears a sharp resemblance to Lady Ariadne Oliver of those later stories.

Lady Playford is the author of a series of children’s mystery books featuring her precocious ten-year-old heroine Shrimp Seddon. As Catchpool puts in, Shrimp is left to solve so many convoluted mysteries because the police assigned to the case are Inspector Imbecile and Sergeant Halfwit.

It’s a bit of irony that the pair of Irish gardai who come to investigate the real-life murder might double for the coppers in Shrimp Seddon’s adventures. Of course it is up to Poirot and Catchpool to handle the real investigation, over the stringent objections of their avatar of Inspector Imbecile.

Parts of this case are obvious from the beginning. Not so much the whodunnit as the why somebody dunnit. This is a case with motives aplenty. Nearly everyone wanted the dead man to be dead, albeit for different reasons. And the initial investigation rules out very few of the possibilities.

There are oodles of tempting red herrings, and all of them prove tasty to the investigation, at least for a time.

Much of this case revolves around psychology. The psychology of the killer, but mostly the psychology of the victim. The motives in the end would work as well in a 21st century thriller as they do this early-20th century murder mystery. But the melodrama is pure Poirot.

closet casket uk coverAnd just as with The Monogram Murders, the UK cover of Closed Casket does a much better job of capturing the Art Deco style that I associate with Poirot than the US cover. C’est la vie.

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