The Couple at the Table
The top 10 Sunday Times bestseller - a gripping crime thriller guaranteed to blow your mind in 2024
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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Publisher Description
***WINNER OF THE 2023 CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY***
THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Completely ingenious, entirely satisfying - a delight from start to finish' ALEX MICHAELIDES
'BY FAR Sophie Hannah's best one yet. Relatable, funny, high concept and so satisfying I watched in awe as the pieces fell into place' GILLIAN McALLISTER
'You'll love this brain-melting thriller!' FABULOUS
'A wise and witty portrait of modern marriage and murder' THE TIMES
'One of the best crime writers current working' THE SCOTSMAN
SIX COUPLES. ONE LUXURY RESORT. THE PERFECT MURDER . . .
A dream honeymoon...
You've madly in love, newly married and at an exclusive resort.
A nightmare dinner ...
You receive a note warning you to 'Beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours.' There are five other couples. Any of them might have murder in mind.
A crime that seems impossible...
Who tried to warn you? Who is out to get you?
And will you make it home alive?
SOPHIE HANNAH IS THE QUEEN OF THE UNGUESSABLE MYSTERY!
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
One of the many strings to prolific crime writer Sophie Hannah’s bow is her role as the Agatha Christie estate’s anointed author of the official Hercule Poirot continuation mysteries. Christie’s DNA can certainly be detected in this knotty thriller, which is a fiendishly clever 21st-century update of a country house whodunnit. Hannah’s popular returning detective duo DC Simon Waterhouse and DS Charlie Zailer are among the half-dozen pairs of minibreakers at a swanky couples-only countryside resort. However, their well-earned luxury weekend is cut short by threatening notes and a seemingly impossible fatal stabbing. All the guests have a motive. They all have a rock-solid alibi too. In a tangled web of infidelity, inheritance and betrayal, suspicion falls on each in turn. Both a tense, twisting puzzler and a nuanced portrait of modern marriage with echoes of HBO drama The White Lotus.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In bestseller Hannah's subpar 11th Spilling CID procedural (after 2019's The Next to Die), it's been six months since Jane Brinkwood, only daughter of Lord Brinkwood, was fatally stabbed at her father's Tevendon Estate Resort, a British couples-only venue. Curmudgeonly Det. Constable Simon Waterhouse, who was vacationing there at the time with his long-suffering, more socially adept wife, Sgt. Charlie Zailer, took over the murder investigation. He concluded that the culprit must be among those staying at the resort, but no more than that. Lucy Dean, a fellow guest and the ex-wife of Jane's widowed husband, badgers Waterhouse into vigorously renewing his inquiries. Jane is revealed to have been a thoroughly unpleasant person, who managed to offend and/or threaten everyone within snarling distance. For Waterhouse, who rightly describes Tevendon as "full of psychos," the question becomes not so much who killed Jane as who wouldn't want to. Too many daft theories, tenuous motives, irritating suspects, red herrings, and lies weigh down the plot. What starts as an irresistible puzzle becomes a disjointed, repetitive muddle. Hannah has done better.
