Book Review: The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

I’m not always keen to read new fiction that brings back characters from classic novels. There’s an endless stream of new books about Jane Austen and her characters, and while some are excellent – I would heartily recommend Miss Austen by Gill Hornby, or The Clergyman’s Wife by Molly Greeley – others are not a patch on the originals. So, as a die-hard Agatha Christie fan, I was always going to be a little reluctant to try new mysteries featuring the Queen of Crime's much-loved sleuths.

Then Sophie Hannah came up with The Monogram Murders – the first Poirot mystery to be published in 39 years. Needing the approval of Christie’s family, it seems only a top-notch author would do. Hannah, also a life-long Christie fan, and author of the excellent Spilling CID and Culver Valley crime series, should be up to the job if anyone is, I figured, so thought I’d give her new Poirot mysteries a go.

The Monogram Murders starts out with Poirot taking dinner at a café close to his temporary digs, a lodging house he shares with a young policeman, Edward Catchpool. His attention is caught by a woman in distress. Jennie claims to be in fear for her life, but if the murderer catches up with her, it would be no more than she deserves.

Back at their lodgings Catchpool is distressed by having to take charge of a case where three victims have been found at a luxury hotel, each of them laid out as if awaiting burial and with a monogrammed cufflink in their mouth. Their deaths will take our crime-fighting duo back to a small village and a tragedy from sixteen years before.

The novel kept me guessing to the very end and had a lot of the same plot devices that helped make Agatha Christie's books so iconic. There were plenty of red herrings, as well as second-guessing and late revelations. Poirot does his usual round-up of all the interested parties towards the end, outlining the case, the suspects and how the crime evolved, with more than one surprise at the end.

Catchpool is there to be to be chivvied along, playing a role similar to Captain Hastings in the original books. Catchpool is not particularly imaginative, misses the clues that Poirot sees as obvious and jumps to conclusions. Poirot however finds some potential in the policeman and tries to encourage him, but it only frustrates the young man when Poirot leaves him to figure things out for himself – Poirot being determined it is the only way he’ll learn.

It all adds up to a brilliant read that still has the warmth and humour of the original books, stylistically updated a little for the modern reader. We get a hint at a lingering heartache in Catchpool’s life – something to be explored in future books perhaps. Poirot is his usual self – harping on about his ‘little grey cells’ and charming witnesses into telling their stories. There is also Christie’s sense of evil hovering in the background, and the idea that the truth must out, that crime must be paid for.

I loved The Monogram Murders and raced through the novel, just as I would a long-lost Christie novel I hadn’t read before. There are five in the series so far by Hannah, so plenty more to enjoy. She gets the thumbs-up from me.

Posted by JAM

25 March 2024

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