Monogram Murders: I liked it but didn't love it and I'm not sure why...

mstrsims2

i just finished Monogram Murders.

First the praise:  it is well written, she develops the characters, there are plot twists (which also counts against it..) and she ties almost everything up in the end.

it took me almost 2 weeks to complete the book, which is a rarity for me with any Agatha Christie book.   I was determined to get through it, and I'm glad I did because only then can I make my case.

At times I wondered is all the plot twists were a bit too much. It seemed as if Sophie was trying to "outdo Christie" in this regard.

I said she tied everything together at the end and she does except for the few points that Catchpool comes up with (I guess he represents the reader with his questions being our questions).  Are we too assume those were all red herrings thrown out to us?    

But the sticking point for me with the book was that Poirot is more annoying than usual.   He condescending attitude with Catchpool seems more irritating than Poirot-Hastings interactions.

Maybe Sophie did this on purpose to develop a love-hate relationship for future stories she intends to write.  Admittedly an adversary relationship, where in future stories Catchpool will try to be just as smart as Poirot, would be a good working plot point rather than the faithful puppy following the master and being awestruck at every turn.

I'd like to ask her that question.

But for those who haven't read it, I encourage you to do so, if only to appreciate Agatha Christie's writing ability.

Any thoughts?

Tommy_A_Jones

Perhaps you disn't like it because you know you shouldn't you say that 2 weeks which is a rarity with an Agatha Christie book but it isn't an Agatha Christie Book, it's a Sophie Hannah Book, you say that her Poirot is more annoying and you ask if she was trying to out-do Agatha Christie, perhaps she was, is that really a good thing? I haven't read the Book I don't want to and after your Well-written Critique I don't want to waste my Money on it. 

shana

@mstrsims2 : I read it, didn"t like it as much. As for Catchpool; I thought he was the condescending one, he didn"t CATCH on to much. Sophie"s Poirot also came out different and the story included the use of bits of original AC stories.

Griselda

I haven't felt a desire to read it. I feel it would make me sad that it is not a true Christie. 

I can't help thinking that in the relationship between HP and his underling that it is entirely possible that Miss Hannah might have been influenced by the Inspector Morse/Lewis dynamic. The last quarter century has been so shaped - in televisual terms - by the great duo, that it would be hard to think of detection writers not bearing the series inprint on their unconsciousness in the way that AC herself and other contemporaries were impressionable to the influence of Sherlock Holmes. Happily AC left that influence by the 1930s when she more and more found her subject matter among the hidden hopes and desires of the middle class perpetrators of crime.

I feel with Poirot that he sacrifices everything, his popularity, his dignity to the pursuit of truth and in dismissing Hastings he is almost talking aloud, and clearing inconsequential lines of enquiry from his mind. If Miss Hannah's Poirot is boorish, then I think she has added in a character defect which AC did not admit in her hero.

S_Sigerson

Thoughts? Well..... For starters, why would someone read about a character they find annoying? Christie who admitted to finding Poirot irritating had a pretty good reason to put up with him - she was getting paid. The reader is not Chrstie so they are not obligated to read about the little Belgian sleuth. And to be honest one thing I've never found is Poirot to be annoying. Amusing, most definitely. I find his egotism quite hilarious. I still get a chuckle at the end of Three Act Tradegy. "Mr. Satterthwaite looked cheered. Suddenly an idea struck him. His jaw fell. 'My goodness,' he cried, 'I've only just realized it. That rascal, with his poisoned cocktail! Anyone might have drunk it! It might have been me!'" Poirot then says, "There is an even more terrible possibility that you have not considered. It might have been me." You gotta love the little guy with the big mustaches. And why would I or anyone else need to read Sophie Hannah to appreciate Christie's writing ability. You can do that by reading Christie herself. I read Christie because I find her mysteries entertaining. I read Sophie Hannah because I either find Hercule Poirot mysteries entertaining or I happen to enjoy reading her non-Poirot books or maybe even for both these reasons. But one thing I won't do is waste my money or time reading something I didn't like or at the very least find interesting in some way.

maryamalbulushi

I totally agree with @Tommy_A_Jones about the reason why you're not liking the book ,and I too don't want to read it because for me there is only one poirot who is christie's and I won't replace it with another poirot.. Another point ,I never find poirot annoying ,the attitude that the most people hate it's what I love about him ^_^

Tommy_A_Jones

Characters I do find annoying are Jane Hellier with her silly Bungalow story and not being able to think up names for places and having to be helped by Sir Henry and forgetting the way she was trying to tell it and Raymond and Joan/Joyce and Miss Knight as I thought all 3 were Agist and Patronizing but Find Poirot annoying? Definitely not, I found Colonel Race annoying too but that isn't his fault, the creation of him was one of the few ideas that really came to nothing.

AndreaBRINET

I did not like Monogram Murders at all... I don(t think that Hannah can become the new Agatha Christie, she is far from the Queen of Murder; Her Poirot is just annoying... Just by the way, I just finished (but it's in french, my mother language) a novel written by an unknown writer, Erich Alauzen, called Double Noeud (1-Les meurtres de Brandys Bay)... Really, this guy has known how to recreate this special Agatha Christie atmosphere... 

Double noeud (action happens in British Cornwall in 1923) appealed to me better than Hannah !!! Hope he will have his book translated to english...

If you are interested, the book is sold on amazon.fr or amazon.com 

Thanks to Agathachristie.com for this very interesting forum...

Agatha Christie anyway cannot be replaced and I am quite angry at her relatives to allow someone touch to Hercule Poirot...

Tommy_A_Jones

There are enough Writers who give me the same feeling of enjoyment that Agatha Christie does but in a more modern way, perhaps they will make you feel the same, I speak of Rebecca Tope and her 3 series, Ann Granger has 4 series' (Each with 2 people) There is The Corinth and Brown books by David Roberts and The Simon Brett Books with his Actor Charles Parris and The Widow Melitta Pargetter and another 2 series' and C. F. Roe and M.C. Beaton.

Tommy_A_Jones

I am more than angry, I am FURIOUS at her Relatives allowing The Character to be used.

ChristieFanForLife

I don't intend on reading The Monogram Murders. I'll stick with reading the original Poirot books from Agatha Christie which can never be duplicated.

maryamalbulushi

yeah @andreabrint @tommy-A-jones  I am angry too they shouldn't have let anyone to use poirot 

S_Sigerson

On further reflection this book reminds me a little of Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I do agree with the repetition in the later part of the book. To me this is just filler. Even though I can understand why this might be done considering people today probably do have shorter attention spans than they did in Christie's time. Still I would have liked to see the page count kept to around 250 pages, similar to Christie' own full novels. Now I wouldn't give this book 5 stars or even 4 stars, but I wouldn't give it 2 stars either. However I do think it is a good/average mystery so I would give it 3 stars....which equals a C - still quite good...4 stars or a B should be reserved for above average (sometimes harder to do than you might think if we are being honest about it)...5 stars definitely an A which equates to brilliant and not many books can fit into this category...very few indeed. Perhaps with a really good editor you could have got the book up to 4 stars, but maybe not. I would also like to mention people seem to forget that not all of Christie's books are masterpieces. She did write some real clunkers. By the 1950s there were signs of decline and by then she did start to reuse her plots from her earlier books. And to be fair no writer who writes for over 50 years with Christie's output is going to be able to produce all masterpieces. There are a few exceptions of her later books including Endless Night. And I've always been partial to Halloween Party and Nemesis. Partly because I enjoy Halloween and partly because I like gardens, marrons glaces and partridges, as Miss. Marple does in Nemisis. Although these two books can't possibly compare to books like And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, just to name three. Christie definitely hit her stride in the 30s and 40s by which time she was able to hone her writing and storytelling skills. What works and doesn't work and so on. Perhaps Sophie Hannah might do the same once she becomes comfortable with Poirot and writing this type of mystery. Considering this was her first attempt, I would say she did a pretty good job. And I found she did capture the Poirot from Christie's stories.

Griselda

Hi S, (Hope you don't mind me calling you S)

D'you know, I'm not sure that a writer ever can get into their stride with someone else's main character. I am enjoying trying to write a Poirot, and I have to say that after a while your own ideas take over. I'm, thinking of a 'red herring character' and trying to think of which real life person I would base him on, at the moment. Your own experience intrudes, well, it does if you are sufficiently engaged with the project. In a way, getting better at a pastiche is hardly a great boast: progression, for a successful writer, might be to actually come up with your own great detective, like the authors Tommy A Jones et al, helpfully mention to us. (I'm enjoying reading the French Christie-esque author one of our fellow posters - and all Tommy's list) I like to think, being a fan of Christie's depth and genius as well as entertainment value she offers, that the Poirot we see is the iceberg on the the top of the sea, and the great man exists in 3D in the mind of that genius. We can't fathom that, anymore than we can recreate a snow flake.

How interesting that you like Endless Night, when so many fellow posters do not. I like it too.SPOILER ALERT I feel that the fact that AC has tried to get inside the mind of a sociopath shows that she is committed to the truth just as much as Poirot is. She writes this novel for the sake of her art. She would have known that it would have been an unsatisfying act to try to make the character convincing - because we read to have a sense of morality reinforced, and the emphasis on an unpleasant character is not going to give we readers satisfaction. She couldn't possibly empathize with the man. The little details of her thinking I like: she has that whole attitude well - he kind of likes things - like girls - but is just just as happy when a new one comes along. The moral deficit she writes about is there - he doesn't understand why he has no morals - and his own predicament. His sensibility comes in understanding beauty and quality - and he has no fear of class, he moves effortlessly across the boundaries. This is a true observation of the type, I believe. The scenes with the mother are wonderful - especially when we reflect on them after we know what she knows about the SPOILER ALERT watch. 

The tv version of this a year or two ago at Christmas was very fine, I thought. Excellent central casting - they could use that young man again for any number of Christie villains - SPOILER ALERT the racing driver in At Bertram's Hotel for instance, or the one in Sparkling Cyanide. In the tv Endless Night,  I like the putting in of Julia McKenzie's Miss Marple - she was sensitive and on form. She was really getting to know Marple by then. I think we needed that good character to give us our compass in the over-surge of unpleasant, selfish evil.

Griselda

Hi S,

That should have read I'm enjoying the idea of reading all those contemporary authors suggested by fellow posters - I haven't started reading any of them yet.

maryamalbulushi

Hello @S_Sigerson I can see what you mean but don't you see it's base is wrong ..using someone elses character into your work when the author herself decided to end its journey and that is of course for a reason,then why should we wait for her to get used to poirot? And I totally agree with @Griselda about that when a person tries to write by the time his own feelings take a major role and come up with a whole new great detective .. That was my point..have a nice day ^_^

S_Sigerson

I agree it is difficult, especially if you are not the one who created the character in the first place. But it is possible to write a serious book based on someone else's character. Of course it will never be quite the same as the original author's work. However, I've read all of Christie's mysteries. Although I do like to pick one up every so often, I also like the prospect of reading another story with Hercule Poirot or even Miss. Marple that I haven't read before. It's nice to be surprised. Also it's fun to read along trying to guess who the murderer is. With Christie I can't do that because eventually I do remember who did it. I'm under no illusion that this new work by a different writer will be an exact carbon copy of an original story by Christie because I'm not sure that's even possible. But I think Hannah has done a good enough job with this first book that I will give her another try if she decides to write another one. I can understand why people might not want to read this book. And I respect their right to do so. Everyone is different. But for those of us who do want to read it, I feel strongly that we should have the opportunity to do so.

Griselda

Yes, S, 

In one respect, I do think you are completely right in what you say about having read a book before and remembering - after a little while it comes back to you - who did it. This happened to me with The Crooked House. I suddenly thought, 'Oh, of course', because I had read the book when I was a teenager - and my memory had retained it.

I am excited about these other books recommended by fellow posters. Some on this forum are so well read! It is a privilege to be recommended by connoisseurs - it would take ages otherwise to come across good books by reading magazine reviews..

Tommy_A_Jones

If I understand your Post and are reading the works of the Writers I mentioned I hope you enjoy them as Much as I have, although perhaps not as Gentle as Agatha Christie, I do find them Cosy.

I agree with you that if a writer ends a Character's Journey another Writer should not write for them unless a Writer dies during writing a book but I don't mind so much if the Character wasn't initially Killed off, If Miss Hannah had chosen anyone other than Poirot I don't think I would mind until I read it of course and thought it rubbish.

maryamalbulushi

That's exactly what I am trying to say @Tommy_A_Jones

Tommy_A_Jones

Good, Enjoy.

MarcWatson-Gray

The only good thing i have to say with regards to The Mongram Murders, is that it  gave me an even (if it was possible) deeper respect and admiration for Agatha Christies' writing.In my humble opinion,the book was trying too hard to capture the essence of Christie......Like trying to grasp a cloud in your fist.......impossible......I tried to keep an open mind when reading it........But i could not finish it (And i hate not finishing a book once started) I then dove straight into the ABC Murders.......Joy........ No disrespect to Sophie Hannah,but it should have been left alone  (Bearing in mind that i could not write a pamphlet !!!! )