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The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah #BookOfTheMonth

I have a confession.

I am an Agatha Christie virgin.

Thinking that the age of 35 is way too old for this title I tried to suggest one (any) as a book of the month to the group. We ended up settling on Sophie Hannah who has written three Poirot novels in the style of Christie with The Monogram Murders being the first of the three and for that reason only our September book.

Based around a classic locked door mystery, Poirot with the help of Catchpool (not Hastings!) must put his little grey cells to work to sift through a large cast of characters and red herrings before the inevitable 'gather round' reveal in the closing chapters. 

Let me first caveat everything below with the fact that I very much had to force the time to read this one. A line or two here before school run, a paragraph before packing for brownie camp, two reads of the same sentence in between spelling tests. Can you tell the school year was once more upon me?

I therefore wasn't surprised when I found half way through that I just wasn't into the story. Despite making a conscious effort from then on in I still felt unattached to the book and didn't really care about any of the characters. I have watched Poirot on television, and appreciate he is a very marmite like character (whom I quite liked), I therefore knew what to expect when coming to the book and Hannah captured him perfectly. However even I found towards the end that his constant inferences that Catchpool was stupid were grating.

The group raised a number of issues when discussing the book, the main one seemingly being the amount of time spent devoted to the big reveal at the end. With 25% of the book still to go Kindle readers were left thinking that the e-copy perhaps contained a snippet of the next book in the series (Closed Casket). It didn't, there was just a very large section of the book dedicated to the big reveal. Indeed there were so many reveals that by the time the book ended I had no idea what exactly was going on. One member commented that it seemed to become all about Poirot and how fantastic he was rather than the actual solving of the murders. It did feel as though the reader was never given the opportunity to solve the crime with deductions being made by Poirot that the reader simply could never have made.   

Having read Anthony Horowitz writing as Arthur Conan Doyle (House of Silk) and PJ James' attempt at capturing Mr Darcy (Death Comes to Pemberley) we discussed the challenge facing an author when taking on a well loved character. We were divided as to whether the author should stick faithfully to the style, characters and setting, with some objecting to the author inserting any of themselves into the story and some feeling it was positively needed. If we couldn't agree, how is an author ever going to satisfy everyone on this point?

Someone suggested they struggled with the book due to their exposure to modern crime stories that are fast tempo and much more high octane (and perhaps written with a TV series or a Kindle preview in mind?) The group does read widely however including books written in the 1920/30s and set in that period with it not seemingly being a problem previously. There was a very large cast of characters to keep up with and I don't think that helped.

It was gentile, humorous at times and if you are a Poirot fan desperate for new escapades it will serve you well. But I found the final explanation of the afternoon tea silly and in general it was a twist, a character and a "Catchpool of course you didn't understand it" too far for me.

We scored it a 5 and I've just realised despite it I am still an Agatha Christie virgin. Damn.

Our next book is Snare by Lilja Sigurðardóttir. 

The link above to the book takes you to Imagined Things a little place of wonder in Harrogate!



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