Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

If you were going to sell a book using a Christie character, surely you'd do your homework?Apparently not. Watch me now, I have done more research for this complaining review than Hannah does for her whole book.Poirot is a parody of himself - an achievement, really, when Christie wrote him as a caricature in the first place. In Christie's works he is egotistical, certainly, but it is well founded egotism always. In Christie's books when Poirot exclaims he has been three times an imbecile, it's because he has, up until that point, been thinking along the lines of the reader - thinking the obvious, overlooking some simple point - and has realised what the self same facts actually mean. It is not having to be told what strychnine poisoning looks like, it is not having to ask the suspects for help (hot tip for Ms. Hannah: he asks people questions in the 'give them enough rope to hang themselves' way, not because he's out of ideas), it is not having to be told what to do by your new POV character.Speaking of the viewpoint character - awful. He started off putting me in mind of Colin Lamb from "The Clocks" (1963) and then dropped the impartial narrator act to start whining and fussing and complaining. If you've read "Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920), you know for all that Hastings draws his own conclusions, he is still charming and you, the reader, are still given the straight facts fair and square - it's up to you to assemble them. No such luck here.And, oh, the behaviour of everyone is anachronistic; three servants for an upper-class household in 1929? Really? In "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" (1934) a small middle class household has the same number! Servants who are /rude/ to the quality, no less. The characters all call each other by their first names: these are not 'bright young things' sneering at the class system they benefit from, these are a doctor, people in their 30s and 40s, people who are not related by marriage or blood -- people who would always call Poirot 'Monsieur Poirot' and who would call a married woman using her husband's name, think "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" (1938) with Mrs. George Lee and Mrs. Alfred Lee or "Murder on the Orient Express" where one character calling another by her first name is a clue!Christie wrote books using intelligence, using psychology over physical clues - all of that is absent here. Messy prose, rather than Christie's clear style, and completely overlooking what makes a Christie book brilliant. Don't bother.

This was very disappointing read ; tedious and verbose, most unlike Christie's writing style. The drawn-out, lengthy conversations between the central characters on page after page became extremely tiring to read, and the final explanation was something of a cop-out, with a thoroughly unbelievable motive. Worst of all, there was not one likeable character, and Christie's books always had those, even if they were flawed at times. Poirot himself was rather shadowy in this tale, and setting it in Ireland didn't really work, either. I won't be reading the next one, I'm afraid.

The trouble with a rewriting of Agatha Christie by someone else is precisely that: try as she might, Sophie Hannah cannot reproduce Christie’s style- Christie was no real stylist, but she had an instinctive feel for plot, and knew when to move things on, Hannah lacks that facility, and as a result the plot drags, with too much time spent on superfluous detail that leaves this reader yearning for her to get on with things.The plot, such as it is, is straightforward enough. Inspector Catchpool of Scotland Yard gets invited to the country to protect a lady. There he encounters Hercule Polrot, who is there for a similar purpose- Togethrt they investigate a murder mystery almost Byzantine in its complexity involving an extended family all worried about the final destination of the old woman’s money. As usual in such situations, it is money that brings the family together once.more-There some memorable characterisations. The daughter and her fiancé exchange waspish opinions that shock everyone else, but represent the. Means for keeping them together. The more personal the insult, the more they like it, Sometimes these characterisations are so monstrous that they threaten to disrupt the flimsy plot.In thee d, the murderer is exposed by Poirot with Catchpool’s aid- But we are left short-changed a little, on account of wanting to know more about the other charActers. Sometimes it seems that Hannah has become so engaged with them that the plot is overlooked.CLOSED CASKET offers mildly diverting entertainment, but could have been a much better tale if Hannah had balanced plot and character.

This was a very disappointing read and one I only finished because of spite. I'm struggling to think of parts or instances where I thought it was enjoyable which is never a good sign. The setting is classic, a wealthy estate fairly well secluded with a bunch of toffs roaming around being rich or whatever. But the thing is, none of the characters introduced were little more than a collection of tropes or single note characteristics, there was no depth or reason to care about any of them. They weren't even fun for their flaws! Then there was the general plot which just waffled along becoming a bore then infuriating and in the very last quarter it was solved by information "off-screen" by Poirot that we aren't privy to to allow us to puzzle things out ourselves, no rather we are just told. This takes all the fun out of a good mystery in my opinion but at least this wasn't a good mystery, to begin with. The very last few pages I was almost angry I was so ready to be done with this hoping that some final sentence might at the very least redeem it slightly but no, alas, it was not to be.

Boring . Made overly complicated to compensate for a very thin story and ridiculous motive .