Sophie Hannah’s recent Poirot novel leads Samantha Joseph to ponder other instances of returning detectives
AFTER reading Hercule Poirot exclaim “Incroyable” for the third time (or so), I came to understand that The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah, although touted as “The New Hercule Poirot Mystery”, was not really about Hercule Poirot or the memory of this ridiculous, affected but undoubtedly lovable character.
It is about Edward Catchpool, Scotland Yard detective, friend of Poirot and our narrator.
Using a proxy to tell a mystery featuring Poirot was not a strange concept even when Christie was alive.
In Murder in Mesopotamia, a nurse named Amy Leatheran tells the story, using the gimmick of a memoir — so Poirot not being front and centre isn’t a cause for concern.
It is only that the Poirot featured in Monogram Murders is curiously quiet, lacking in the foreign vitality that so characterised him, resulting in a Belgian detective who is less quirky and self-satisfied, and more run-ofthe- mill mysterious and stubborn.
IsexpectingAgathaChristie’sexact words and style to appear on the pages too high an expectation to have when reading what The Guardian calls “ author ial regeneration”? Yes and no, in this case.
Sophie Hannah herself stated that she had no intention of duplicating Christie’s recognisable style when she set out to write this novel.
“The actual writing style can’t be exactly the same, so instead of trying to replicate it exactly, the way I got around it was by inventing a new narrator,” she says in an interview with The Telegraph.
Enter Catchpool, young, doubtful of his own prowess and faintly neurotic.
Although the storyline is introduced via Poirot and his happenstance meeting with a mysterious woman who insists that she will be murdered, Catchpool picks up almost immediately once the Monogram Murders occur.
Three bodies are found in three separateroomsofahotel,laidoutinthe same way, each with a monogrammed cufflink in their mouths.
It seems to be a mysterious, simultaneous murder, and we eventually discover that not only is its execution unfathomable, its origins are from an incident that takes place nearly 30 years prior to it.
In Catchpool, we see the modern version of the age-old investigator, done up for this generation and its love of beautiful and delicate things — psychologically fragile, slender in built, vulnerable.
A Benedict Cumberbatch version of Sherlock, instead of Sherlock himself who was hard, uncaring and impersonal, rather than merely antisocial-butsecretly- kindhearted.
Inthesenseofmodernentrapments, Hannah’snovelisasuccessfulone.The toneoftheinvestigation, the psychological platform from which the descent towards the murders dives off, the nebulous personal fears that form Catchpool, all point towards a well-written, intelligent mystery novel.
These elements also resultinacomparatively messy, convoluted plot that further divides it from Christie’s original writing which, whatever flaws it had, were undeniably neat and more or less believable in spite of (or possibly, because of) the multiple convenient instances of coincidences.
Why then do we keep going back to familiar characters when their voices cannot possibly be replicated?
DEATH BECOMES HER
Dame Agatha Christie is notable not only for her prowess in mystery writing, but also for the fact that she is considered the best-selling novelist of all-time.
According to publisher HarperCollins’ website, Christie has sold over two billion books worldwide and has been translated into over 45 languages.
But in these days of Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson, she may not be as much of a household name.
For the Christie estate that had until now been reticent about leasing out the rights to her charac ter s, this novelby S ophie Hannah was intended to serve as a sort of re-introduction for the younger generation who are unfamiliar with Christies’ characters, and a reminder for those of us who are.
“Obviously, the publication of a new Poirot by Sophie Hannah is an event all on its own, but we also hope it will help renew interest in the real Poirot stories,” says Mathew Prichard, overseer of the Christie estate in an interview with literary website bookpage.com.
We could consider this a purely financial step for the estate, or we could also consider it in the context of a missing familiarity that prior readers always hope will return, and new readers may learn to embrace.
In the crime genre, it’s perhaps fitting that these pastiches serve to keep the flames of a dead character alive through continuing murder; an immortality bought through the fascination with and cultivation of death.
This is so prevalent in the case of Sherlock Holmes that the character has its own ‘list of pastiches’ page on Wikipedia, with almost 90 different homages in different mediums.
The Seven-Percent Solution by Nicolas Meyer, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz and The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr are some of the most well-known pastiches, and even MichaelChabonhaswrittenone, The Final Solution.
Recently, the US Supreme Court freed the Sherlock Holmes and associated characters from copyright, surely inviting an even greater Sherlock free-for-all.
Thentherearethe“resurrectionist” books, where authors take the leftovers of a dead author and piece them together with the gum of their own writing to create a whole.
Thrones, Dominations, a Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Jill Paton Walsh is one of those.
Created by Dorothy L Sayers, the aristocratic Wimsey had quite a following around the same time as Christie’s novels, and after the passing of Sayers, materials for one semi-complete novel and notes for another were discovered.
The first became Thrones, the next was A Presumption of Death, both sanctioned by the trustees of Sayers’ estate.
Two other books starring Wimsey and his novelist wife Harriet Vane were written by Paton Walsh after that, The Attenbury Emeralds and The Late Scholar.
THE READER’S CONUNDRUM
Was it a good idea to split the last two Harry Potter and Hunger Games movies into two parts? What about turning TheHobbit into a three-movie epic? If we were talking about movies rather than books here, there would likely be accusations of “overstaying their welcome”, “stretching it for money” and simply “unnecessary” which would be happily steamrolled over by the producers on their way to the bank.
Which, frankly, is probably part of the reason why publishers encourage this sort of writing.
Why bank on something completely new when you have rights access to publish something with a pre-existing and possibly slightly rabid fanbase? If you believed that this phenomenon was specific to novels written before the 1940s, you would be unfortunately mistaken.
The aforementioned Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium series that includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, passed away in 2004 before completing the intended 10 instalments.
Norstedts, Larsson’s original publishing house, will be rolling out a fourth installment of the bestselling series written by journalist and author David Lagercrantz.
There is, in fact, an existing nearlycomplete manuscript of the fourth book that Larsson wrote himself, according to The Telegraph but because of a rights issue involving his partner and his family, the publishers decided to run with an entirely new author instead.
In this case, one must wonder whether serving the buyers, regardless of authenticity in delivery, is more important than being true to the source of the novel, in this case the writer himself.
How is any of this better than well-edited fanfiction in that case? Nostalgia is a nemotion unsparinglyusedagainstanaudience, whether they are film viewers or book readers.
But often we are willing to be taken advantage of if the returns are good enough — knowing that a character you love will remain immortal is sometimes enough to forgive the fact that their resurrection may have been less than perfectly executed.
The Monogram Murders Author: Sophie Hannah Publisher: HarperCollins Pages: 302