The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
This is the second of the new Poirot mysteries that I have read and while I enjoyed it, I’m still not won over by Monsieur Poirot.
Three people are found murdered in a London hotel. All in different rooms but all with a monogrammed cufflink in their mouths. At the same time, on the other side of London, Poirot is enjoying his regular Thursday dinner at a local coffee shop when a woman in distress catches his attention. The woman believes she is in danger of being murdered. But before Poirot can get more out of her, she slips out into the darkness.
When Detective Catchpool tells Poirot of the bodies found at the hotel, the Belgian makes the connection to his own run-in with the woman. And when the three victims in the hotel are all found to have once lived in a small village that experienced an unspeakable tragedy sixteen years previous, Poirot is determined to get to the bottom of it.
The solution to this mystery was complicated. And I don’t imagine many readers will have solved it. It requires a person to keep too many details in mind all at once. Which, I suppose, is the mark of a great mystery. But Agatha Christie’s detectives have always “cheated” a bit. Miss Marple puts everything together because she knows an unrelated story about two people in St. Mary Mead that just happens to coincide with the murder before her, which the reader can’t know about until Miss Marple tells us. And Inspector Poirot has a bad habit of finding a connection between two things which no normal person would connect. Now, maybe that’s part of his charm for some people. But I don’t necessarily love it.
However, I still enjoyed this book. Even if it was a little hard to follow at points. I did feel as though the side characters weren’t as fleshed out as in The Three Quarters Mystery. Partially that was due to much duplicitousness on their part. But I still didn’t feel as connected to any of them as I reasonably should.
In spite of my reservations, I’m still giving this book 4/5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and even though the solution was incredibly complex, the mystery was still a good one.
KT Byrde Writes 