December 1931 and Hercule Poirot and his companion Inspector Catchpool are asked to investigate a murder at a hospital in Norfolk by Catchpool’s mother. She is staying with friends, one of which, Arnold Laurier is due to be admitted to the same hospital. Laurier’s wife is convinced that Arnold will be the next victim. But there is something of a problem.
Arnold is, apparently, a big fan of Poirot and has studied his methods scrupulously. He sees an opportunity to emulate his hero and solve the murder himself, despite his family’s concern that he is putting himself into the killer’s crosshairs. Can Poirot and Catchpool solve the case in time to save Arnold and get back in time for Christmas?
I’ve been looking at some Christmas titles recently and it seemed to me that this would be a serious omission. I dodged it last year as I didn’t get approval for a NetGalley review copy – who knows, maybe they read my reviews of the previous Poirot continuations – but when I saw it for 99p on Kindle, I thought I’d give it a try. Maybe a dash of Christmas magic would spice up the series.
And maybe Poirot will sprout wings and fly to the top of the Christmas tree…
Once again, I fail to see the point of continuations of any series if you are not going to mimic the style of the original. This has been done for years with Sherlock Holmes, I suppose, dating back to the Basil Rathbone films set during the second World War, so there is a tradition to it. There have been official Campion, Wolfe and Wimsey continuations as well – no one seems bothered to do the further adventures of Roderick Alleyn, poor chap – but I’ve not read those. I have read these, as Hercule Poirot will always be one of my favourite detectives, and the Agatha Christie stories featuring him will always be some of my favourite mysteries. And these just don’t measure up.
The author just doesn’t capture the style properly – Poirot is the eccentric, whereas here the suspects (and the police) are the eccentric ones and Poirot is almost an everyman. He fails to spot when something thunderously obvious happens, and is bizarrely forgiving of a certain action. He also appears to have taken time to describe word for word the events of a couple of chapters when Catchpool – the narrator – wasn’t present and yet, with barely a mention, describes perfectly what happened. A map of the hospital might have helped, too.
But at the end of the day, I could have forgiven quite a bit if the book wasn’t boring. And it is. Pound-Shop-Hastings, sorry, Catchpole’s presence still baffles me – is Hastings under a different copyright? – and it takes a long time between Poirot arriving and a murder happening before anything resembling movement takes place. There’s a repeated foreshadowing of a family Christmas parlour game but given that it never happens, I failed to see the point of it being mentioned.
It baffles me – why not just re-release Hercule Poirot’s Christmas with a beautiful new cover? It’s a classic Christie with one of her best hidden villains – unlike this one, where the killer sticks out with a sore thumb.
So please, a request. If you’re a fan of Christie’s books AND a fan of these books, please can you defend this one in the comments? I think I’m in something of an echo chamber as every Christie fan that I know is less than impressed by the continuations. So please, someone give me a defence for these books. I am genuinely curious.
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
I won’t add to the small avalanche of negative views on the Hannah books about Poirot but I will reccomend Mike Ripley’s Campion books. He just published MR CAMPION’S CHRISTMAS, which is his twelfth and final book in the series – and they are so well done. I know you are not a big Allingham fan (now there is a real mystery …), but these are really good.
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One day, maybe, but only after reading the originals. It’s on my long list of things to do…
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I’m so glad you reviewed this as I’ve been considering it. I too don’t like the idea of a continuation and have never read one, although I do have Anthony Horowitz The House of Silk on my ‘waiting to be read pile’, but then I love everything he writes. I don’t think I’ll bother with this as I don’t think anyone can do Hercule like Christie… except maybe Horowitz.
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Yes, I’d read Horowitz’s Poirot. Actually, the recent Marple short story book is pretty good, with a couple of notable exceptions. I’d read another of those…
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This isn’t any sort of defense, just explanation: Hannah purposefully chose NOT to mimic Christie’s writing or style. This represents an opposing viewpoint to your belief that anyone who “continues” the career of a classic detective should essentially mimic the original. Frankly, I see both your points.
As for Catchpool, Hannah‘s novels are supposed to fit into the continuity of Poirot’s career by taking place while Hastings was in Argentina. So it’s not a copyright issue, just a choice. 😜
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I understand the choice was deliberate but I’m still baffled why, other than to sell books using Poirot’s name. If it’s not Poirot (and that includes the setting and style of book) then don’t pretend it is. Ditto the Malkovich adaptation and to be honest some of the later Suchet adaptations.
As for Catchpool, at least his fear of dead bodies didn’t last beyond the first book. But the notion that he’s Poirot’s best friend ever and Hastings and Japp never even get a mention just feels odd.
At the end of the day though, regardless of it being Hercule Poirot or Hercules Parrot, it’s a dull slow book with an obvious killer and a necessary exposition dump at the end from the killer. Oh, and forgot to moan that the crucial clue is pictorial and not described – even Catchpole moans about it!
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Hmmm … I just bought this on impulse given I like Christmas mysteries at this time of year. Now I wish I hadn’t. It doesn’t sound good.
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Give it a go. I’d love a second opinion…
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I just finished this and you’re right. It’s just not that good. Brad’s comment above was helpful as I let go of the assumption that Hannah’s Poirot would be a faithful pastiche. Still …
Catchpool has to be the dimmest, most insipid inspector ever. How did Scotland Yard ever employ this guy? Poirot sums up Catchpool well when he says, “You are incapable of seeing the thing that matters.”
Catchpool’s mother was annoying; I would have been happy for her to have been one of the victims. I easily figured out the culprit one quarter the way through the book although how Poirot got to the motive is beyond me as this was not fairly clued. Again you’re correct that the hospital needed a map.
I can’t recommend this one and doubt I will read any of the others in this series anytime soon.
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I just finished this and agree it’s just not that good. Brad’s comment above was helpful as I let go of the assumption that this was a faithful pastiche of Poirot. Still…
Catchpool dominated this book and has to be the dimmest, most insipid detective Scotland Yard made the mistake to hire. His mother is annoying, and I would have been happy if she had been one of the victims.
I easily figured out the culprit only a quarter the way through the book although how Poirot ever got to the motive was beyond me as it was not fairly clued. You’re right that a map of the hospital would have helped.
Not recommended.
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Since Hastings narrates his books, having a different narrator is I think intended to help explain why they are written in a different style.
Oh, and there has been a completion written of a manuscript Marsh barely started. Money in the Morgue by Stella Duffy. I thought she did capture the tone of Marsh very well.
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Since Hastings narrates his books, having a different narrator is I think intended to help explain why they are written in a different style.
Oh, and there has been a completion written of a manuscript Marsh barely started. Money in the Morgue by Stella Duffy. I thought she did capture the tone of Marsh very well.
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Completely forgot about that, thanks for the reminder.
As for the style, yes, that’s a good point, but a change of narrator doesn’t explain the change in style of plot though, or changes in Poirot’s character (unless the latter is due to Catchpool being as bad an observer as he is a detective)…
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Okay, here goes. I really enjoyed this book, as I’ve enjoyed all of Hannah’s Christies. I think the key to her approach here is in an answer she gave to an article* asking crime writers for their opinions on Christie. She said that her favourite Christie is After the Funeral and she likes how Christie came up with interesting motivations for her killers in many books:
“[After the Funeral] also does something else very clever on the motive front – it offers us a two-layer motive of the following sort: ‘X committed the murder(s) for reason Y. Ah, but why did X have reason Y as a motivation? Because of reason Z.’”
The psychological approach is what I find interesting in her continuation Poirots, and I do find them suspenseful for that reason. The situation set up in Silent Night was genuinely tragic and surprising to me when revealed, even if whodunnit wasn’t as shocking as it can be in Christie. There were strong characters and a good exploration of motive. Just my take.
* “Agatha Christie: genius or hack? Crime writers pass judgment and pick favourites”, The Irish Times, 16/09/2015
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Fair enough – each to their own. My concern re the motives is that they require too much explanation. The motive in After The Funeral is simple – it can be summed up in a few words, as can the “trick”. She provides detail and character work too, but it’s something the reader can follow and possibly guess. Here Hannah requires chapters of back story, even a final “letter” from the killer that must have taken them an age to write to clarify matters. As with all of her books, Hannah misses the core simplicity of Christie and for me, this is fundamentally where these books don’t work.
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I don’t know if the motive in Silent Night is ultimately that complex. She’s trying to conceal her identity from one who would reveal it, that’s the lynchpin. But yes, it lacks the purity and guessable “fair play” quality of a Christie. I think that Hannah is ultimately a more psychological writer than Christie ever cared to be. Her work is much less pristine and controlled and machine-like than Christie’s, less about that perfect plot construction that the Queen of Crime was so good at. But I’m okay with that personally because I like the atmosphere and character work that Hannah brings.
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