It’s a Mystery: “Murder, I have often noticed, is a great matchmaker.”
/The Killings at Kingfisher Hill
By Sophie Hannah
Morrow, 2020
Sophie Hannah’s fourth mystery to feature Agatha Christie’s inimitable detective, Hercule Poirot, after The Monogram Murders (2014), Closed Casket (2016), and The Mystery of Three Quarters (2018), is a stylish, classy addition to the series. It is February, 1931, and Poirot and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Edward Catchpool, who serves as the story’s narrator, are heading to Kingfisher Hill, the exclusive estate owned by the Devonport family. They have been summoned by Richard Devonport, the scion of the family in order to prove his fiancée, Helen Acton, is innocent of the murder of his brother Frank. (It’s a little complicated, she was engaged to Frank at the time. And she even confessed to pushing him to his death.) But Richard doesn’t believe her and since he knows proving her innocence won’t be easy, he thinks it’s the perfect case for Poirot.
Richard’s one condition: nobody can know the real reason for Poirot’s visit. So he and Catchpool pose as board game enthusiasts interested in a game that Richard created a year prior with the lamentable name of Peepers. On the luxury motor coach en route, a woman claims that she needs to switch seats or she’ll be murdered. Poirot’s infamous intuition tells him she has revealed only part of the story. A second woman confesses to Poirot that she has killed a man. Soon, he is up to his remarkable moustaches in suspects. But, as he has often said, “It is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant”. Also “I do not take sides. I am on the side only of the truth…. I am probably the greatest detective in the world.”
So, relying on his sharp brain—his “little grey cells”—he sets out to clear Helen and find the real killer before they can strike again. This takes him down a labyrinthine path of clues, red herrings, and misdirection galore. Finally, he is at his outrageously immodest best when, in time honored Poirot fashion, he pulls it all together for the grand solution!
As the fourth in what has been coined “the new Hercule Poirot mysteries,” it is patently clear that Hannah has settled beautifully into the role of keeping Christie’s renowned detective alive and well. Make no mistake, this is the same Hercule Poirot fans the world over know and worship. But Hannah has modernized the way in which the story’s told just enough that the pacing is noticeably quicker, making it that much harder to put down.
Even more noteworthy is the way Hannah has stayed true to Christie’s characters while also creating a mystery worthy of dropping them into. There certainly was a time when it would have been hard to imagine anyone else writing Hercule Poirot. Now, Hannah’s emergence as one of the finest writers on the scene today has helped usher in a new era of old school mysteries—
and just like before, Poirot is leading the way.
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill is a masterfully plotted, mind-bending thriller that harkens back to the days when Agatha Christie ruled the genre. Bravo Sophie Hannah!
—Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.