2,215: The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

As I seem to recall having written before, albeit in different ways, literary resurrections can be something of the proverbial curate's egg.  Whilst some of the Bond revivals (which have been ongoing since the first John Gardner "continuation" novel) have been excellent, others have been limp and formulaic.  Sebastian Faulks made a valiant attempt at a Jeeves and Wooster novel but, at least to me, was always doomed to fall just short.  On the other hand, I am told that many of the continuation Mapp and Lucia novels are a joy.

Despite the recent rash of literary licences and continuation novels, Agatha Christie's literary executors had long held out against the phenomenon until, in 2013, it was announced that acclaimed crime writer Sophie Hannah had been commissioned to write a "new" Hercule Poirot novel.  Cue outrage from Christie fundamentalists, paroxyms of joy from other Poirot fanatics (what would the Poirotesque version of a "Cumberbitch" be called, I wonder?) and a predictable avalanche of hyperbole from the publishing and literary PR worlds.

Having previously been guilty of letting the hubbub surrounding a hyped new book affect my judgement of it (and here I cite Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles as exhibit one in the case against me), I decided to bide my time and display (as an unabashed Christie fan) Zen master-like patience, in waiting until recently to read The Monogram Murders.

And you know what?  It's really rather good.

Set in the winter of 1929, we find Poirot having taken up residence in a boarding house, seeking a period of respite from the gruelling business of detection.  Unluckily, maybe, for Hercule, Edward Catchpool, a young Scotland Yard detective, is also a resident.  Catchpool has been assigned a new and baffling case: three bodies found dead in separate rooms in the same West End hotel.  Each has been careful positioned after having been poisoned and a monogrammed cuff link has been placed in the month of each victim.  As one might guess, such a curious scene is irresistible to Belgium's finest, especially once he surmises that cuff links usually come in pairs and that the absence of the fourth cuff link may suggest that a fourth killing is in the offing.

It's a classic Christie set-up and Hannah uses a number of Christie's favourite motifs and tricks throughout the novel.  Poirot's investigation expands to include a reinvestigation of a separate death 15 years earlier (Five Little Pigs); Catchpool is a reasonable facsimile of the Hastings/Japp sidekick role; and Hannah, a psychological crime writer by trade, makes of Catchpool a far more rounded figure than either of Poirot's erstwhile sidekicks.  She gives real depth to his inner thoughts and insecurities, to the point where I sagely nodded my head, saying, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" to myself.  Was I right?  You'll have to read it and find out for yourself.

But, with a character as iconic and ask over as Poirot, the nub of the thing is always going to be: Does she get Poirot right?  And I think the answer is, pretty much, yes.  There is a school of thought that maintains that Poirot was never a fully realised character but merely a detailed assemblage of quirks and characteristics, really just an entertaining delivery vehicle for the solution of the mystery.  If this is your view, then Hannah ticks all the boxes.  From his OCD-like love of order, to the random use of French and his sentence structure, the surface Poirot is present and correct.

If, on the other hand, you agree with David Suchet and other lovers of Poirot that, despite the quirks and character tics, Poirot is a humane and developed character, concerned not just with the solution but with the concept of justice, then you should still be satisfied with Hannah's rendition of the character.  My only slight reservation (and, should you be interested, I come from the Suchet school  on Poirot), is that, at times, Poirot's dialogue seems not quite as alive as in Christie's originals.  I can't quite put my finger on it but I never felt that this could have been Poirot written by Christie.  It wasnt a big thing and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book - it just wast quite as good as some of Christies's best Poirot's.

As Hannah also inserts a goodly quantity of Christie style clues and red herrings and has created a satisfyingly twisty plot, although her writing style is more complex than Christie's and, I would claim, better than Christie's, this is recognisably a Hercule Poirot novel and a satisfying new "fix" for fans of Christie.

It's not perfect, of course.  As I have mentioned, Hannah's style is more complex than Christie's and, although this could, under normal circumstances, be seen as a good thing (and Hannah is a highly talented writer), in The Monogram Murders, it, perversely, serves only to highlight Christie's real genius - her deceptive simplicity.  The best of Christie's crime novels manage to deceive the reader and to divert one's attention from her clues within a very clean structure, without sub-plots or unnecessary intricacy.  Everything is there on the surface and yet supremely hidden so that, when the denouement takes place, somehow it's all so blindingly obvious.  Hannah's plot, although enjoyable and satisfying, lacks this simple intricacy, which I think is much more a tribute to Christie than a criticism of Hannah.

Finally, and this is my biggest issue is that I just didn't quite believe in the premise of the solution.  One of Christie's qualities was that, despite the totally unrealistic circumstances of some of her novels  (Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express spring to mind), the solutions seem both logical and, at least once we know them, obvious.  Here, I felt as if i were being asked to stretch to accept the premise on which the solution was posited.

Still, I really did enjoy The Monogram Murders and think Sophie Hannah has done a wonderful job in producing a readable and satisfying Poirot novel.  I'd certainly read more Poirot by Hannah and the fact that The Monogram Murders doesn't quite have Christie's peculiar genius to it is no criticism at all.

2,332: Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

Eh bien, mes amis, could this really be a new Agatha Christie?  Could this really be a lost Hercule Poirot story, published for the first time by Witness Impulse, HarperCollins’ digital mystery imprint?

Well, yes and no.  For, in truth, the story goes something like this.  Back in 1954, Ms Christie agreed to write a story, the proceeds of which would be donated towards the purchase of new stained glass windows for her local church. Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, a novella featuring the great Belgian himself was the result.  So, why is it only now being published, I hear you cry.  Well, dearly beloved, this may come as a shock but, what with it being that awkward beast, a novella, neither short story fish nor novel fowl, not even Agatha herself could get anyone to publish it.

She liked the story though and turned it into a full-length novel, Dead Man’s Folly, with the church receiving the proceeds of Greenshaw’s Folly, a Miss Marple story in its place.  And that’s the rub for, although technically a new story, Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has read (or seen) Dead Man’s Folly.

For those who haven’t, the story opens with M. Poirot receiving an urgent cry for help from his friend, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver.  Rushing down to the titular Greenshore House, he finds that Mrs Oliver is engaged in devising a murder mystery for the village fete and that the most serious thing that has actually happened is that she has had a premonition.  Of course, the premonition is borne out when the lady of the house goes missing and the fake corpse in the murder mystery turns out to be very dead indeed.  Cue Poirot and cue a classic Christie mystery.

Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly has all the ingredients of a Christie mystery: an English country house, lots of red herrings, some nicely antiquated snobbery, caricature suspects and, of course, Poirot himself.  There is also some amusement to be had from Ariadne Oliver, a thinly-disguised parody of Christie herself, and her musings on the detective story process.  Christie uses Oliver and her fictional detective, the Finn Sven Hjerson (a clear allusion to Poirot) to poke fun at herself and to vent her frustrations at Poirot whom she had grown to dislike - she once described him as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.”

Although it’s only half-true to describe it as a lost work, Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly is a thoroughly enjoyable short read that will appeal to lovers of Golden Age detective novels as well as to Christie fans.  Just make sure you haven’t read or watched Dead Man’s Folly recently.

I’d like to thank Witness Impulse for allowing me to read this via Edelweiss.

2,334: Poirot and Me by David Suchet

This may sound rather silly but I’ve still not been able to watch it.  It sat on my Sky+ box for weeks before being replaced by a DVD version just before Christmas and now rests on the DVD shelves awaiting the call but, for some reason, I’m just not ready for it.

I’m talking about Curtain, of course, the last ever episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, with David Suchet as everyone’s favourite Belgian.  It started nearly 25 years ago in January 1989 with The Adventure of the Clapham Cook and ran for 70 episodes, covering every Poirot novel and virtually all of the short stories.  It’s a great achievement as the main characters remained constant throughout the whole run and Suchet’s Poirot is, surely, now the definitive Poirot, standing head and shoulders above other cinematic Poirots, including those of Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney.

As well as this, it has been one of my personal favourite series, having started whilst I was at university and having been an on-and-off companion throughout my adulthood.  There is something peculiarly comforting about Suchet’s humane and affectionate portrait of Poirot and, even now, if I’ve had a tiresome day, I will slip an episode into the DVD player after Mrs F has fallen asleep and allow it to soothe me like a nice mug of hot chocolate.

Oddly enough, though, I had completely missed just how loved the series was by the general public and had, for some strange reason, thought it was just another TV detective show that I happened to have developed a peculiar fondness for.  Not so.  Not by a country mile as, come last November, in the run-up to the final episode, there was a blizzard of media coverage of the event, David Suchet became a staple of the interviewer’s sofa and the man himself published Poirot and Me, a memoir of his time as the great detective.

It’s a very engaging read and Suchet comes across as a serious character actor who ended up identifying with Poirot maybe a little too much and becoming driven to complete the cycle and to portray the character in the way he felt would realise Christie’s vision of Poirot.    Incidentally, he also appears to be a genuinely nice man, with the merest touch of thespian vanity.

The book opens with Suchet’s account of how he came to get the role, including a meeting with Christie’s daughter the (now late) Rosalind Hicks in which she admonished him not to mess it up and the advice he received from his brother, the ITV newsreader John Suchet – don’t touch it with a bargepole!

Fortunately, David ignored this well-intentioned fraternal advice and prepared for the role by listing 93 character traits of Poirot that he needed to reflect, which is actually reproduced as an illustration in the book.

As well as containing reflections from Suchet on pretty much every episode he appeared in, Poirot and Me is stuffed with fascinating anecdotes, on and off the set.  We hear about disagreements between star and directors, changes in production team, his fellow actors and actresses and the struggles in achieving the full cycle.

Although obviously focussing on Poirot, the book is also an interesting account of the life of a character actor and it is immensely to Suchet’s credit that, despite becoming so closely identified with Poirot, he managed to maintain a flourishing career away from the series and has become one of Britain’s best character actors.

All in all, if you loved the series or have an interest in TV or the stage, I am sure you will enjoy Poirot and Me.  And frankly, it’s worth the purchase price just for the story of Suchet, the mango and the Royal………. 

2,530: 8.55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames

In one of those serendipitous events that seem to be a frequent occurrence in the lives of many writers, Andrew Eames was staying in Baron’s Hotel in Aleppo, where he was introduced to the mother of the owner who was persuaded to retell the story of how Agatha Christie and her second husband, Max Mallowan had come to dinner with her and her husband.

As Eames later found out, in the aftermath of the breakdown of her first marriage and her infamous eleven day “disappearance”, Christie had, on a whim, decided to take the train to Iraq for a holiday.  Outlandish as this may seem today, in 1928, when she took her trip, this was a perfectly “doable” exercise, which took eight days, using two luxury trains.  It was on this trip that she first met Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist and, having married him in 1930, she would spend her summers for the next 30 years assisting him on his digs in Syria and Iraq.

The route of Christie’s original trip took her through a veritable gazetteer of modern trouble spots: the Balkans, Syria and Iraq and, spotting a good “hook”, Eames decided to recreate her journey in early 2005, before the Iraq war but at a point where it looked inevitable.

The resulting book, 8.55 to Baghdad, traces this journey and interweaves his impressions of these countries today with his quest to find traces of Christie’s journey in the places he visits, starting in Sunningdale, the scene of the last years of Christie’s unhappy first marriage, where Eames catches the titular 8.55 train, which actually takes him to Victoria to catch the Orient Express.

Eames’ concept is quite a tricky one as he is trying to fit two very distinct stories into one book: the personal history of a middle class novelist in the 1920s and the story of the impact of conflict in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.  Although, for me, he doesn’t quite manage to carry the whole thing off, it is, nevertheless, an enjoyable piece of travel writing.

There are some vivid passages in the book and, given the material to work with, Eames is capable of telling a good story, in particular, his journey through Iraq with a spectacularly mismatched bunch of tourists, all clearly members of that weird sub-species of travellers who are drawn like lemmings to grim places for their holidays.

He is also very good at illustrating, through the accounts of his personal encounters, the general humanity and kindness of people who can often be perceived as nameless and faceless representatives of countries with whom we are in conflict.  Eames reminds us that, regardless of where we are from, most of us are reasonably decent people, just trying to make a life for ourselves and our families.

Although Eames professes to be a Christie fan and to be interested in following her steps, 8.55 to Baghdad doesn’t really show this and the Christie bits seem to be a little half-hearted and even suggest a lack of familiarity with her and her books.  Indeed, he confesses at the beginning to not even knowing who Max Mallowan was.  The book feels like Christie was just a tool to link his travels together.

I also found that his historical interludes, whilst interesting, were a bit shallow and came across as if he’d done a little bit of basic research to fill out his personal stories, rather than showing any detailed knowledge.  It’ a bit of a quibble but it detracted from the book for me.

Overall, though, despite these issues, I enjoyed the book, although I suspect that it won’t stick long in the mind.  It was, however, sufficiently interesting and informative that I will be checking out his other travel book, Blue River, Black Sea.

2,550: Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran

I haven’t read any Agatha Christie for some years now.  As a child, I used to love them, especially Poirot (I was never a Marple fan) and must have read most of her non-Marple books.  As an adult, however, without quite succumbing to the snide criticism that a lot of people seem to have for Christie, I haven’t until recently felt the urge to reacquaint myself with her.

John Curran, on the other hand, is a massive fan of Dame Agatha.  Indeed, he is described as an Agatha Christie scholar (yes, apparently they do exist).  And so, according to Curran himself, he came to make the acquaintance of Matthew Pritchard, Christie’s grandson and, on a visit to Greenway, Christie’s country home in Devon, he discovers, tucked away in a locked room, Christie’s notebooks, 73 of them to be precise, filled with her jottings and ideas.  Hence the title of his books, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.  Only, there’s a snag.  You see, they weren’t really secret at all.  In fact, both of Christie’s biographers, Laura Thompson and Janet Morgan, had already had full access to them and had analysed them in their own books on the Queen of Crime.

I suppose it’s a minor quibble really and, to be fair to Mr Curran, it doesn’t really detract from what he has set out to do, which is no less than an exhaustive, scholarly analysis of the notebooks and an attempt to link them to Christie’s final, prodigious output.

Before discussing the book proper, I should give you a couple of warnings.  This is not a book for non-Christie fans.  Indeed, it may not even be a book for casual Christie readers.  Curran brings the full panoply of scholarly technique to bear and digs down to a level of minutiae that is likely only to appeal to the Christie hardcore.  Secondly, the book assumes a fairly in-depth knowledge of her oeuvre from the reader.  If you have only a passing acquaintance or a vague memory of them like me, much of Curran’s work will pass over your head.  Finally, the corollary of this is that the book is crammed with spoilers including the identity of virtually every Christie murderer.  In defence of Curran, he does highlight at the beginning of each chapter the books he discusses in that chapter.

Assuming that I haven’t put you off already, there is much of interest to the dedicated Christie fan.  Curran quickly makes it clear that Dame Agatha could not be accused of being a methodical worker.  The chronology of the notebooks bears little resemblance to the chronology of her bibliography and notes on different books are jumbled up together.  One gets the distinct impression that she had an incredibly fertile mind that threw off ideas left, right and centre in an almost random fashion.  One of Curran’s strengths is the way in which he has managed to draw some order out of the apparent chaos of the notebooks.

He does this by organising his chapters by theme (nursery rhymes, modes of travel, murders overseas).  This allows him to explore relevant parts of the notebooks in a systematic manner, although it does lead to a certain amount of repetition and means that it is difficult to get an organic sense of Christie’s workings.

Curran also manages to tease out some themes that run through Christie’s novels and short stories.  If one were playing “Christie Cluedo”, it would be a fairly safe bet to plump for the doctor having committed the murder with poison.  Christie’s favourite settings were also of the English village or country house mould, notwithstanding books like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express.  Family dynamics were also issues in which Christie had a great interest and Curran writes informatively on how this is reflected in her books.

Another fascinating insight that Curran gives us is the lack of certainty that Christie had when starting a manuscript.  She was perfectly capable of changing murderer, victim and even detective halfway through the writing process as can be seen from her notes.  One bit of trivia that might be of interest is that Miss Marple was originally meant to have been the detective in Death on the Nile before a change of heart gave the assignment to Poirot.

If Curran has hyped up the alleged “secret” nature of the notebooks, he partially redeems himself by including two previously unpublished Poirot short stories in the book.  The first, entitled The Capture of Cerberus was originally intended to form part of Poirot’s Labours of Hercules, originally published in Strand magazine in 1939 and 1940.  It’s an odd story, featuring a thinly disguised Adolf Hitler and an unusually virile Poirot (he drinks vodka with a Russian countess and scales a high wall).  Deemed unsuitable by Strand, an alternative version was eventually published by Collins in the book edition.  As I say, it is an odd story and, although an interesting curiosity, not a classic by any stretch.

The Incident of the Dog’s Ball, on the other hand, remained unpublished due to its similarity to the novel, Dumb Witness.  Frankly, it’s not very good and I can see why it hadn’t seen the light of day until Curran got hold of it.  It does, however, highlight one of Christie’s habits, that of recycling plot devices throughout her output.

In conclusion, if you are a Christie fan, there is enough of interest here to make it a worthwhile, if slightly heavy read.  It’s probably best taken in small doses and maybe alongside a reading of the books he is discussing.  Although I am not sure I will bother with the second volume, which is due out in the near future, it has piqued my interest in Christie sufficiently that I have set myself the target of reading (or re-reading) all of her crime stories in chronological order both to see whether I still enjoy them and to put context to Curran’s commentary.