The Monogram Murders

Right before I started this book, I read Agatha Christie's "Mrs. McGinty is Dead," which is a complicated but tightly woven mystery, and comes in at about 180 pages. Despite the complexity of the plot, it's easy to traverse, because Christie's writing was succinct and clear: no unnecessary description or dialogue, and the mystery is all right there in the first telling of it; no cheating and story-changing; no pulling plot points out of a hat at the end.

This book, on the other hand, might be a good mystery for some other author, but is a most unworthy successor to Agatha Christie. I spent most of it with my brow furrowed, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It was chaotic, messy, and never asked its reader to be clever, show more only confused.

Here's how I felt about the plot while reading: that I was on a meandering train ride which stopped periodically to pick up passengers at seemingly random moments, with varying sizes of baggage - and maybe sometimes it just stopped to pick up baggage, with no passengers in sight - and meanwhile we were mostly going forward, but sometimes going backwards, and sometimes in circles, and after quite a while we thought we were near our destination, but not really, just kidding, and gradually the train climbed up a steep hill, sometimes slowly, sometimes less slowly, but all the while gathering more passengers and baggage, until finally, finally we reached the top of the hill and then before we knew it we were BARRELING DOWN THE HILL AT TREMENDOUS SPEED OH MY GOLLY AND BAGGAGE AND PEOPLE STARTED FLYING EVERYWHERE AND THE TRAIN CAREENED OFF THE TRACK AND ENDED BELLY UP... The End. show less

Can the empty shoes of Dame Agatha Christie be filled with substance? Can the life of her Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, be portrayed well enough by another to read as Dame Agatha's lost manuscript? A resounding yes! for the brilliant plot and execution of story provided by author Sophie Hannah. The syntax and rhythm are so perfect that one hears in their mind the voice of British actor David Suchet deftly delivering Hercule's lines throughout the story.

As in a typical Christie plot, there are twists, turn and red herrings along the way. Poirot's fastidiousness, punctilious punctuality and superior "grey cells" ring out loud and clear as ever before. This was a delightful, couldn't-put-it-down mystery with all of the charm of the show more original Christie novels. I certainly hope this is not the last we'll hear of our resurrected Poirot from this extremely capable author. Well done Madame Hannah!

I am grateful to Goodreads' First Reads, author John Rector and publisher Thomas and Mercer for having provided a free copy of this book. Their generosity did not, however, influence this review - the words of which are mine alone. show less

Let’s get the most important point out of the way: Hannah Sophie is no Dame Agatha Christie. With Laurie R. King, her Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series, which begins with The Beekeeper's Apprentice, you forget you are not reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, she so perfectly captures Conan Doyle’s voice. The same goes for Jill Paton Walsh when she is at her best and is completing an effort begun by Dorothy L. Sayers, as in Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death (although not in her solo effort, The Attenbury Emeralds. Ugh!)

Set in 1929, in The Monogram Murders, Hercule Poirot sets out to help the hopeless Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool (a clueless Captain Hastings stand-in) to investigate the cyanide murder of three show more guests in the posh Bloxham Hotel in London. All three were found laid out as if at a funeral parlor — except that each, a man and two women, had a monogrammed cufflink in the mouth. The two women — Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury — live in the village of Great Holling; the third victim, Richard Negus, once lived in that same village and was the fiancé of Miss Gransbury until he broke off the engagement in 1913.

Earlier, Poirot had encountered a young housemaid named Jennie at a coffeehouse. Before fleeing, she predicts her own death and judges that her demise would be justice rather than murder. Despite Catchpool’s skepticism, Poirot insists that Jennie has a connection to the Bloxham Hotel murders. Want to bet who’s right on that one?

Why had they been killed? Poirot senses that the clues to the motive lie in Great Holling, and he dispatches Catchpool to snoop around there while Poirot tries to track down the elusive Jennie. Both discover quite a lot, but I won’t spoil the novel by saying any more.

Fair is fair, and The Monogram Murders should not be judged on whether it is pitch-perfect Agatha Christie — it clearly isn’t — but whether it is an enjoyable mystery. And there Sophie succeeds. No, the first Hercule Poirot novel since Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case was published in 1975 never comes close to Murder on the Orient Express, The A.B.C. Murders, The Labours of Hercules or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But, while a bit too clever by half — too convoluted to ring true, too broad in its portrayal of Hercule Poirot as a romantic, too implausible in its denouement — The Monogram Murders proved a suitable companion on a day when I was home sick as could be. And I’ve never been one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. show less

Hercule Poirot is having a quiet dinner in his favorite London coffeehouse when he encounters a young woman who is terrified of being murdered. Later that day Poirot hears of a murder at an upscale London hotel and accompanies the Scotland Yard detective staying in his boardinghouse to the scene of the crime. There he learns of a mysterious clue...a monogrammed cuff link left in the mouth of each of the three victims. He can't help but think that the young woman he met earlier that night may be the murder's fourth victim...

I personally really enjoyed this book, though I know it's taken some hard hits from other reviewers and even some critics. I didn't go into this expecting the writing to be anything like Christie's writing because - show more gasp - Sophie Hannah isn't Agatha Christie! Of course the writing won't be a replica of the original Poirot works. Hannah does, however, capture Poirot's personality - his disdain over a lack of imagination in his detective partner, his excitement when he's put two clues together, and his pompous explanations at the close of the book. Another thing she successfully manages to do is to capture the importance of motive and psychology to the plot. She is able to show us both the morality and the darkness of the characters in her story in a way that was vitally important in all of Christie's work.

In the end, the Monogram Murders should not be looked at as a "continuation" of the Poirot library, but rather a new interpretation of an old familiar character. The puzzling twists and turns of the plot, the voices of the characters, and the seeming impossibility of the mystery are all echoes of the Christie I love, with the fabulous writing of Hannah to pull it all together. show less

I bought this at a book signing. Sophie Hannah, a great Christie fan (as am I) made it clear that she didn't set out to replicate Christie, as no one could do that, but wrote the book as a tribute to her. I think she achieves her aim quite well. Matthew Prichard gave his consent because he wanted people to start reading his grandmother again, and they are.
Poirot is as fussy, abrasive, wily, and ultimately as kindhearted as he is in the originals, although there, the similarities end. The sidekick – Catchpole – is a Scotland Yard detective. He's more Hastings bumbling, than Japp, but decent and well-meaning. He's there only to narrate, Poirot runs the investigation, the police don't really feature.
At 373 pages, it's long but show more engrossing. With so many oddities to explain, the denounment is possibly a bit too long and rather complicated, but clever for it, and unexpected. There are enough footprints throughout to make it solvable, but mostly with hindsight. This is a cosy murder mystery which requires your full attention.
Don't expect to read Christie, because you won't, nor were you intended to. The Monochrome Murders, is a good Christie-esque read, which, in my opinion at least, is better than some of its reviews suggest.

Nina Jon is the author of the newly released Magpie Murders - a series of short murder mysteries – and the Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series, about private detective Jane Hetherington. show less

0.5*

I have tried to finish this book so many times this week, but The Monogram Murders is not only utterly crap it's also bloody endless. It drags, and drags, and drags.

The last 30% of the book just felt like the story of who did what changed on every page and I completely lost track of what happened.
You know, that fabulous spoof of the mystery genre that is Murder by Death (the film)?
Every character comes up with a different version of the solution, and they are all wrong.

In this book, the same thing happened, but the different versions were not put forward by different characters but by the book's version of Poirot (a poor shadow of Christie's original creation), which made the last 30% of the book absolutely unbearable. And unlike show more Murder by Death, this book was not a spoof of the genre.

No. The only word that comes to my mind to describe this book was: painful.

None of the plot made sense. Poirot is not Poirot. The writing lacks the complexity and charm and atmosphere that Christie's books have.

The portrayal of women in this book didn't work for me - it was in parts downright offensive - and it certainly did not do a book justice that is supposed to be a continuation of Christie's oeuvre.

The romance subplots were ridiculous.

And last, but definitely worst of all, was that the book was narrated from the POV of a character that has no justification of even being in the story. He's the most incompetent policeman or even amateur detective that I can imagine.

Needless to say, I have no interest in reading any other books in the series. show less

On its own, this is a weak novel. The mystery wasn't believable, the repeated depiction of "true love" as unhealthy obsession got old very quickly, and the ending, while tying up the mystery's loose ends, failed to really satisfy. None of the characters grew in the course of the story. The Scotland Yard detective should never have lasted 6 months as a beat cop, let alone been promoted as highly as he was. He was foolish, ineffectual, and unable to handle the work set before him. The main character seemed to be in contact with him purely to give him a new contact in Scotland Yard.

As a Poirot mystery, I'm alternately annoyed with and embarrassed for the author. We almost never see Poirot's bon vivant outlook - always he is angry or show more stern. The author captured his speech patterns, but very little else about the detective. Other than being told the date, the text is remarkably free of temporal reference. There's little to no mention of anything that establishes when the story takes place. That made it hard to know what to expect culturally and technologically - things very relevant in a mystery story.

I fear the Poirot/Catchpool relationship is supposed to be the basis of a whole series of novels. Please, please, whoever gets to decide this, don't do it! Inspectory Japp, at his most obnoxious, is more agreeable than Catchpool. Superintendent Spence would never have allowed such a pathetic creature of Catchpool to sully the ranks of Scotland Yard. Having to watch Catchpool flounder about beside a Poirot grown constantly cranky will have a terrible effect on the little grey cells of Agatha Christie fans. show less