Tag Archives: agatha christie

#BookReview ‘The Monogram Murders’ by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 #crime #mystery #Poirot

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1920s London. A certain Belgian detective is drinking his beverage at Pleasant’s Coffee House when he becomes intrigued by a distressed customer. She is in fear for her life and confides to him, ‘Once I am dead, justice will be done.’ The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah is the first of her official Agatha Christie Poirot continuation novels. Sophie Hannah Poirot, who is taking a mini-holiday not far from home – in order to refresh his little grey cells – later discusses this strange conversation with a fellow guest at Mrs Blanche Unsworth’s boarding house. Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool is 32 years old and somewhat in awe of his new friend. When a murder occurs, it is not Jennie Hobbs from the coffee shop who is dead but three strangers in the fashionable Bloxham Hotel. There is a florid Italian hotel manager, a coffee shop assistant who sees everything, and a glamorous portrait artist who paints glamorous people. The investigation leads the unlikely duo to a village in Devon, home of the three victims, where the puzzle becomes even more puzzling and more potential villains are identified. There is bitterness and revenge, jealousy and moral certitude, love and obsession.
I enjoyed watching the growing relationship, professional and practical, between the finickety Belgian and the cautious, quiet Englishman, and their differing ways of unlocking the same puzzle. Catchpool, who is fond of crosswords, is a literal kind of man and often struggles to see the clues that seem so obvious to Poirot. Poirot, always attuned to emotions, despairs of Catchpool’s lack of imagination.
I’ve loved Agatha Christie’s Marple and Poirot books all my life, including the films and audiobooks, and so was unsure about reading a continuation novel. The Monogram Murders was a little slow to get moving but from halfway through I stopped making comparisons with Christie and just enjoyed the story. This is a complex plot with a tangled history, talented liars and closed room murders.
The next book in the series is Closed Casket.

And here are my reviews of other Poirot books by Sophie Hannah:-
THE MYSTERY OF THREE QUARTERS #3POIROT
THE KILLINGS AT KINGFISHER HILL #4POIROT

If you like this, try:-
‘A Very English Murder’ by Verity Bright #1LADYELEANORSWIFT
‘Murder at the Dolphin Hotel’ by Helena Dixon #1MISSUNDERHAY
‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood #1PENTECOST&PARKER

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MONOGRAM MURDERS by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Xf via @Sandra Danby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Philip Pullman

#BookReview ‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley #crime #thriller

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The Guest List by Lucy Foley is a cracking crime mystery set on an isolated Irish island. The guests are there for the wedding of the year – magazine entrepreneur Jules Keegan is marrying reality TV star Will Slater. What follows is a closed room mystery recognisable from Agatha Christie novels. From the beginning you wonder, who in this group of thirty-somethings is going to be killed? Who is the killer and why? Lucy FoleyFoley expertly plays with our expectations, manipulating our first impressions of the characters as they are introduced. Old friends. Family. School days rituals. Hidden jealousies. Secret wrongs. The atmosphere on the exposed windswept island with its treacherous bogs, cliffs, caves and haunting churchyard is cranked up to full notch. We experience the weekend wedding almost hour by hour as each key character tells their own story, with the narrative chopping forwards to the present during the ceremony and reception. This switching of viewpoint and timeframe can be very sudden but it does ramp up the tension. The murder takes place quite late in the timeline making this more a psychological thriller, building up to the killing you know will happen.
The basic plot questions are – how well does Jules know her husband-to-be? What exactly happened on the stag weekend? What were the rituals at the public school attended by the groom and ushers? And why is Olivia, Jules’s sister and bridesmaid, clearly not coping with life? The options for victim and murderer are extended beyond the bridal group with Charlie, Jules’ best friend, and his wife Hannah; and bridal organiser and host Aoife and chef husband Freddie. Foley presents lots of hints about the past and secret resentments, I guessed a couple quite early on but this didn’t stop me turning the pages.
Read this over a weekend when you need an easy-to-read distraction.

Read my reviews of these other Lucy Foley novels:-
THE INVITATION
THE PARIS APARTMENT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Animals at Lockwood Manor’ by Jane Healey
‘Chosen Child’ by Linda Huber
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4M2  via @SandraDanby

My Porridge & Cream read… Sue Featherstone @SueF_Writer #books #humour #chicklit

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Today I’m delighted to welcome chick lit novelist Sue Featherstone. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie.

“It’s hard to pin down a single Porridge & Cream read because there are a number of old favourites that fit into my comfort-read category. Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels, for instance, Noel Streatfield’s children’s stories and Josephine Tey’s whodunits. But I’m going to choose Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie, which I first read in my early teens in the late 1960s when I sneaked it off my dad’s bookcase.

Sue Featherstone

Sue’s copy

“What appealed to me then is what still appeals today – nostalgia for a bygone age, a murder mystery with lots of red herrings, and a gently unfolding love story. When it first appeared in 1933 Sad Cypress was considered ground-breaking. The murder takes place about a third of a way into the story – giving plenty of time to establish characters and plot – and Poirot doesn’t make an appearance until almost halfway through. Unusually, too, much of the drama takes place in the courtroom.

“The plot is classic Christie: wealthy heiress Elinor Carlisle is heartbroken when her fiancé Roddy breaks off their long-standing engagement to pursue Mary Gerrard, a protégé of Elinor’s recently deceased aunt. And when Mary is poisoned almost everyone, including Roddy who has known Elinor since childhood, believes she must be the murderer.

“When I grew up and left home, Sad Cypress was one of the first books on my new book shelves and my battered 1979 Pan edition is testament to multiple re-readings. Why? Because even though Poirot is a strange little fellow, Elinor’s story – a woman betrayed by the man she loved – has a timeless resonance. Will she forgive Roddy’s betrayal? Or will she find happiness with the local doctor, who has believed in her innocence throughout?

“Truly, Christie is the queen of crime fiction.”

Sue Featherstone

BUY

Sue Featherstone’s Bio

Sue Featherstone is a Midlander, who has spent most of her life living and working in Yorkshire. Her debut novel A Falling Friend, co-authored with Susan Pape, was published by Lakewater Press in 2016 and a sequel A Forsaken Friend followed in March 2018. The pair, who have also written two journalism text books together, are currently working on the final book in their Friends trilogy. Sue was a journalist and public relations practitioner before moving into academia 20 years ago to teach news and magazine journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. Married with two grown-up daughters, she recently welcomed her first granddaughter Iris who is ‘the most beautiful baby in the whole world’. 

Sue Featherstone’s links

Blog

Twitter @SueF_Writer

Sue Featherstone’s latest book

Sue Featherstone

A Forsaken Friend is the second instalment in a Yorkshire-based trilogy that follows best friends Teri Meyer and Lee Harper as they juggle men, careers and family. Their friendship is tested when Teri discovers her ex-husband is in love with Lee. And, to make things even worse, she’s just lost her job and is running out of money. Fast. It’s not all plain sailing for Lee either. Her love life might be looking up – not that she meant to fall for Teri’s ex – but her family life is a car crash. Her Catholic mother isn’t happy she’s dating a divorced man and her father has been given some bad news about his health…Described as a warm, funny and entertaining read, A Forsaken Friend is an intelligent and sassy look at the friendship between two women on the cusp of middle age.

BUY

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-

Rhoda Baxter’s choice is ‘The Nightwatch’ by Terry Pratchett

Jane Lambert chooses ‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier

‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’ by Jean Kerr is chosen by Carol Cooper

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:

Why does chick lit novelist @SueF_Writerre-read SAD CYPRESS by Agatha Christie? #books via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 #crime #mystery

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I am not a great lover of continuation series, books written by a new author after the death of the much-loved originator. It seems a cynical moneymaking move and I fear it will ruin my love of the original author’s books. I grew up loving Agatha Christie and have not, until now, been tempted to read the new Poirot stories by Sophie Hannah. But about to go on holiday, feeling tired and longing for something familiar but new, I picked up The Mystery of Three Quarters. And what a delight it is. Sophie HannahThe story starts as Poirot is challenged in turn by four strangers, each accusing him of naming them as a murderer. Affronted that fraudulent letters have been sent in his name, Poirot sets out to investigate. He suspects however that the supposed victim Barnabas Pandy does not exist. But Pandy does exist, or did, for 94-year old Barnabas Pandy is dead, drowned in his bath. Told by Poirot’s police sidekick, Inspector Edward Catchpool, this is a clever and mystifying story of Pandy, his two grand-daughters, and long-buried guilt and shame.
Hannah writes with ease and I slipped seamlessly into loving and believing in her Poirot. As with all good crime fiction, I had suspicions about the identity of the murderer but only during Poirot’s customary reveal did I connect together the unpredictable clues laid so carefully throughout the novel. And as always, it is satisfying to know I had guessed correctly. At 400 printed pages The Mystery of Three Quarters is longer than Christie’s Poirot novels, which come in at under 300 pages, but I flew through it in one day. Just the ticket for a holiday read.

And here are my reviews of other Poirot books by Sophie Hannah:-
THE MONOGRAM MURDERS #1POIROT
THE KILLINGS AT KINGFISHER HILL #4POIROT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Silent Twin’ by Caroline Mitchell
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Kate Brody #7KATESHACKLETON

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MYSTERY OF THREE QUARTERS by Sophie Hannah @sophiehannahCB1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3yD via @Sandra Danby