The Killings At Kingfisher Hill (A New Hercule Poirot Mystery) by Sophie Hannah

 

The Killings At Kingfisher Hill (A New Hercule Poirot Mystery) by Sophie Hannah.

Published in paperback 13th May 2021 by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

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. Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. There is one strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.

On the coach, a distressed woman leaps up, demanding to disembark. She insists that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. A seat-swap is arranged, and the rest of the journey passes without incident. But Poirot has a bad feeling about it, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered in the Devonports' home with a note that refers to ‘the seat that you shouldn’t have sat in’.

Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And can Poirot find the real murderer in time to save an innocent woman from the gallows?

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I am a huge Agatha Christie fan, with her Poirot mysteries being my absolute favourites of the many novels, short stories and plays that have earned her the well deserved title the Queen of Crime - in fact they are a go to for me when it comes to comfort reading and I always have one or other of the Poirot books, or audio books, on the go at any one time. While I was aware that Sophie Hannah had been commissioned to write some new Poirot mysteries by the Christie estate, this is actually the first one that I have read out of the four books she has now written.

This latest mystery finds Poirot heading off to Kingfisher Hill, a gated estate of swanky residences in the Surrey countryside, in the company of his new sidekick Inspector Catchpole. Although Poirot is rather reticent to share the details of their trip with his friend, we slowly learn that Poirot has been asked to visit the home of the Devonport family in Kingfisher Hill under the guise of an enthusiast for a new board game, while actually being required to solve a murder - and possibly save an innocent woman from the gallows at the same time.

The journey itself is quite eventful, as a young woman upsets the calm of the passengers by acting erratically and refusing to occupy the single remaining seat on-board the bus, because she claims she will be murdered if she does. Oh, and Poirot sits next to a mysterious femme fatale who claims to have committed a murder in the past... intriguing.

But it is not until Poirot and Catchpole arrive at Kingfisher Hill and begin their investigation that the plot starts to thicken in earnest, and we learn that the strange goings on during the journey here are actually related to the matter in hand. The story then plays out in a way that Christie herself would be proud of, with all the lovely foibles and panache of Poirot out in force as he clears up the whole mess, points the finger in the right direction, and astounds everyone with his acumen when it comes to crime and the 'psychologies' of those who indulge in breaking the law - with Catchpole helping matters along in his own special way, as every good Poirot companion does.

Although I originally approached this book with a little trepidation, worried that the Poirot I know and love might be under some threat under the custodianship of a different author, I really should not have worried. This book is perhaps, a little on the wordy side (something that Christie herself indulged in occasionally too), but Sophie Hannah manages to stuff everything I look for in a Poirot novel into these pages with style - the twisty mystery; the dodgy characters who all seem to have something to hide; the red herrings; the sidekick well behind the genius of Poirot's 'little grey cells'; and the rich period feel of the era. The story goes along at a good pace, and completely draws you in, all the way to the kind of classic Poirot 'gather them all together and explain the whole complicated business' ending that I adore. 

Should you be in any doubt about the competency of Sophie Hannah to charge forth with the Poirot brand, then I can dispel your worries completely - this book is hugely entertaining and I cannot wait to now go back and read the others that Hannah has written!

The Killings At Kingfisher Hill is available to buy now in hardback, e-book, paperback and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

About the author:

Sophie Hannah is the internationally bestselling author of 9 psychological thrillers, which have been published in more than 20 countries and adapted for television. Her novel The Carrier won the 2013 Specsavers National Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and as a poet has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.