The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah

               At the moment I’m on a bit of a Hercule Poirot kick.  For the last two or three months I have been working my way through the entire Agatha Christie’s Poirot series starring David Suchet.  Despite the theme song driving me crazy, I’m doing pretty well with the series and have seen quite a bit of it.  This is probably why I became intrigued when I saw an entirely new Hercule Poirot story in an old Bas Bleu catalog.  It’s not written by Agatha Christie, but by the author Sophie Hannah.  With this novel, Ms. Hannah has created an entirely new mystery involving this famous detective and I was curious to see how it turned out.        

                Three people have been found murdered at a fancy hotel.  All three were killed at roughly the same time, but in three different rooms.  They also each had a monogrammed cufflink in their mouth belonging to an unknown person.  Other than that, on the surface there is not much that connects these three people.  When Scotland Yard investigator Edward Catchpool starts to look into the case further, he discovers there is more that unites these three individuals than meets the eye.  For one thing, at one time they all lived in the same village.  It’s not much at first, but it is definitely a start.

                While Catchpool is preoccupied with solving the murders at the hotel, he is constantly bombarded with the thoughts of an acquaintance of his.  The acquaintance is Hercule Poirot and he is determined that a woman he met, Jennie, is somehow involved with the goings-on at the hotel.  Poirot met Jennie at a café he likes to visit and when he last saw her she was greatly distressed.  Expressing a fear for her life, Jennie left the café and disappeared.  Poirot is certain Jennie has something to do with Catchpool’s case, but Catchpool does not agree.  Despite this, Catchpool lets himself get dragged around as Poirot searches for this woman.          

                At least Catchpool does until his own investigation takes him back to the village where at one time all the victims lived.  It is an unfriendly village permanently marred by the incidents surrounding the deaths of a vicar and his wife years ago.  Very quickly the question becomes, what, if anything, do these deaths have to do with the murders at the hotel?  And if Poirot is correct, where does Jennie come in to everything?          

                Most of this book I really enjoyed.  I thought the mystery was really good, but I found myself getting twisted around at the end.  Part of the confusion had to do with the fact that not all of Poirot’s assumptions were fully correct.  Then the story of what really happened was pretty twisted all on its own.  These two things are probably why Catchpool was a tad lost at times too. 

                Poirot, himself, was written pretty much as I know him to be.  While I have read the short stories, Poirot is most familiar to me on the screen.  In fact, as I read this book, I kept hearing David Suchet’s voice in my head every time Poirot spoke.  It’s funny how that happened and it goes to show how well Mr. Suchet has ingrained himself as that character. 

                Also while reading, I felt the desire to reach into the book and bop Poirot on the head, or give him a Gibbs head slap, for his arrogance. Poirot’s superior attitude and tendency to make people guess at his thoughts and conclusions instead of stating them drove me crazy. I’m glad the author included this behavior having the same affect on Catchpool. He was forever exasperated with Poirot’s antics, and the inclusion of this feeling made the book much more realistic. To be honest, without that element, I may have had a hard time finishing this book, because I can only take so much of the “genius” of Hercule Poirot.