The Monogram Murders
A Hercule Poirot Mystery
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3.7 • 41 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Equal parts charming and ingenious, dark and quirky and utterly engaging. Reading The Monogram Murders was like returning to a favorite room of a long-lost home" -Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
Since the publication of her first novel in 1920, more than two billion copies of Agatha Christie’s books have been sold around the globe. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha’s most beloved creation, Hercule Poirot.
‘I’m a dead woman, or I shall be soon…’
Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse 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...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hannah (The Orphan Choir) does a superb job of channeling Agatha Christie in this wholly successful pastiche authorized by the Christie estate. One evening in February 1929, Hercule Poirot is dining alone at a London coffee shop when a woman arrives who looks as if she had "come face to face with the devil." Poirot joins the distraught woman, known at first as Jennie, who tells the sleuth that no one can help her because she's "already dead," and that no one should search for her killer. "The crime must never be solved," she proclaims. Another cryptic remark Jennie makes before fleeing into the night "please let no one open their mouths" resonates with Poirot and Insp. Edward Catchpool, the Scotland Yard detective with whom he rooms, after two women and a man are found poisoned in a hotel near Piccadilly Circus, each with a monogrammed gold cuff link inserted in his or her mouth. The rest of the novel lives up to the promise of the opening, complete with dazzling deductions, subtle cluing, false endings, and superb prose. After the first chapter, Catchpool, who brings his own psychological baggage to the case, serves splendidly as the book's narrator. Lovers of classic whodunits can only hope Hannah continues to offer her take on the great Belgian detective.
Customer Reviews
Enjoyable
I have read all Hercule Poirot books. This one fits in well. Lots of twists, possible too many but still enjoyable. You have a hard act to follow Sophie, but you are off to a good start.
Thoroughly enjoyed it!
I was skeptical at first as with most people when I heard that Hercule Poirot was being brought back to life. But as I started to read the novel I found myself forgetting that it wasn't even written by Agatha Christie! Sophie Hannah did a tremendous job in capturing the Belgian detective's qualities and quirks. When the mystery was being revealed towards the end I found myself at the edge of my seat just as I was when I first read The Mysterious Affair at Styles and even Curtain.