Poirot Redux: Sophie Hannah’s The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

Wow, was this book a disappointment. I read another book by Sophie Hannah recently - The Wrong Mother - and it was complex, suspenseful, and engrossing. After that, I was excited to see how Hannah was continuing Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories. As the only writer authorized by the Christie estate, she has been vetted and deemed the fitting person to continue the Christie tradition. The official Christie website describes her first Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, as "a thoroughly stylish affair, faithful to Christie's story-telling style, yet with a modern touch." High praise indeed. 

And, yes, this story does echo Christie in some ways. It has all of the needless complexity of a Christie story, setting up a crime so convoluted that it feels completely divorced from real life.

However, in this case it has none of the charm or fluidity of Christie’s novels. The opening sequence sets up the scenario, but it is so incoherent that it seems hardly worth following. None of the characters seem remotely plausible, and the action is narrated in a way that makes it seem like it has its own time scheme. For instance, the Hastings character (here reimagined as Inspector Catchpool) has an extended interchange on a bus with a woman about the title of a book she’s reading. This scene feels like it goes on forever, and we’re supposed to believe that this happens while a line of people are waiting for him to move along so they can take their seats. I was expecting him to be the first murder victim. 

In addition to the unbelievable characters and unlikely pacing of the action, this novel includes endless - I mean, pages and pages - of exposition. Very little action occurs, but there sure is a lot of tedious explaining. 

I was very much inclined to like this novel, so I was surprised that narrative's execution was so disappointing. It didn’t help that the convoluted solution isn’t even particularly interesting.

I’m likely to pick up more of Sophie Hannah’s non-Poirot novels, but I can’t say the same for the Christie continuations.

I received an arc of this novel from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.