The Killings at Kingfisher Hill
The New Hercule Poirot Mystery
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3.7 • 63 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot—legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile—returns to solve a fiendish new mystery.
Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate, where Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. But there is a strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there.
The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached…
Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?
Reviews
“‘Close enough to Christie’s own style that the reader could segue from Murder on the Orient Express into this present novel without a stumble.”
— New York Journal of Books
“What Sophie and Agatha have in common is a rare talent for fiendish unpredictability. They make you see how the impossible might be possible after all.”
— Sunday Telegraph
“The latest in Sophie Hannah’s series of mysteries featuring Agatha Christie’s beloved detective is a magnificently intricate puzzle for Poirot’s famous little grey cells.”
— Daily Mail
“I was thrilled to see Poirot in such very, very good hands.”
— Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of Gone Girl
“Perfect…a pure treat for Agatha Christie fans.”
— Tana French
“Does Sophie Hannah’s Poirot live up to our expectations? Yes, he does, and markedly so … Poirot is still Poirot. Poirot is back.”
— Alexander McCall Smith
“Sophie Hannah is genuinely Christie’s heir.”
— The Scotsman
About the author
Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling crime fiction writer. Her crime novels have been translated into 34 languages and published in 51 countries. Her psychological thriller The Carrier won the Specsavers National Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year in 2013. In 2014 Sophie began writing new Hercule Poirot mysteries with The Monogram Murders, which was an international bestseller. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in more than a hundred foreign languages. Her phenomenal career spanned six decades, until her death in 1976.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Hannah displays her superior ability to devise mind-blowing setups in her fourth authorized continuation of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series (after 2018's The Mystery of Three Quarters). In 1931, Poirot agrees to come to Kingfisher Hill, the country estate of the Devonport family in Surrey, at the request of Richard Devonport. The previous year, Richard's older brother, Frank, died from a fall at Kingfisher Hill, and Frank's fianc e, Helen Acton, who confessed to intentionally pushing him, has a date with a hangman. Richard, who's Helen's current fianc , believes she's innocent, and has arranged for Poirot and Scotland Yard's Insp. Edward Catchpool to visit the estate and investigate under the pretense of being interested in a board game Richard's father has invented. On the luxury motor coach from London to Kingfisher Hill, the pair encounter a distraught woman, who, when forced to sit in the one available seat, declares that a man told her that to sit there would mean her death. Then another passenger confesses to a murder. Hannah provides logical and reasonable answers to every oddity. Fans of classic fair-play puzzle mysteries will clamor for more.
Customer Reviews
Easy to read
A fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable attempt at recreating the style of Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. As an Agatha Christie fan, I enjoyed the experience. A little more complex than most of Agatha Christie novels
Codswallop
This is certainly the worst Poirot book ever. It has little structure and is totally unbelievable. It does not merit one star. If it is set in 1931, why does it mention Monopoly which wasn’t invented until 1935, mon ami? I doubt whether Poirot could solve that!