{"id":3785,"date":"2020-09-07T09:53:33","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T16:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3785"},"modified":"2020-09-07T09:57:55","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T16:57:55","slug":"sophie-hannah-the-killings-at-kingfisher-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sophie-hannah-the-killings-at-kingfisher-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Hannah: The Killings at Kingfisher Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Golden age detectives are the perfect characters to provide a continuation of a series.\u00a0 Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot \u2013 all have such well established character traits, and yet do not especially develop or change\u00a0 \u2013 that they can be taken by another writer and made fresh.\u00a0 Sophie Hannah is obviously familiar with Poirot and obviously loves him, as every reader does, despite his quirks.<\/p>\n

Hannah also manages the feat of showing, not telling, Poirot\u2019s cleverness and intelligence as he unravels a tricky case.\u00a0 Like the great queen of crime herself, Hannah\u2019s unraveling is only tricky from a certain angle, from another (Poirot\u2019s) it\u2019s more straightforward.\u00a0 The telling is all in the angles.\u00a0 This is a feat of sheer storytelling power.<\/p>\n

As the story opens, Poirot and his new Hastings, Inspector Catchpool (excellent name), are boarding a tour bus to an estate with a full group of fellow travelers.\u00a0 This perfect locked room scenario isn\u2019t the actual space for the murder(s) to come, but it\u2019s the set up for them.\u00a0 One of the passengers makes a hue and cry about sitting in a certain seat, insisting that if she remains there, she will be killed.\u00a0 Thus is effected the change \u2013 Poirot sits with the woman\u2019s former companion, and the fearful woman sits with Catchpool.<\/p>\n

Both reveal pieces of the puzzle to come.\u00a0 Poirot and Catchpool are headed to Kingfisher Hill at the request of one Richard Devonport, who has asked Poirot to prevent the execution of his fianc\u00e9e, who is in prison for killing his brother.\u00a0 He\u2019s asked that their mission not be revealed to the family, and Poirot and Catchpool are ostensibly visiting as fans of a game (sounding very much like Monopoly) created by the man\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

Along their bus journey, Poirot and Catchpool make a stop to follow up on one of the women but they do travel on to their original destination.\u00a0 There, we as readers meet the Devonport family \u2013 a family ruled by the tyranny of the cruel father.\u00a0 The mother, in the last stages of illness, seems like a ghost.\u00a0 Hannah then proceeds to complicate the plot and introduce several surprise turns at masterly points in the storytelling.<\/p>\n

As the plot became more and more complex, I was with Catchpool: confused.\u00a0 He serves as Poirot\u2019s factotum, gathering information and clues, which leads to the ending of the novel, properly staged as a gathering of suspects, including the condemned woman, temporarily released from prison for the occasion.\u00a0 As Poirot makes his final reveal, the pieces all slot into their proper order, making you wonder how they could have been missed.<\/p>\n

Golden age novels were about the plot and little else, though masters of the genre like Christie, Marsh, Sayers and Allingham were expert in sketching and creating a character with very few lines of prose.\u00a0 Modern crime novels are about the aftermath, and here is where Hannah\u2019s modern sensibility creeps in.\u00a0 She makes clear the repercussions for the family as well as the murderer, and she makes you feel real loss about the deaths that occur.\u00a0 It makes her continuation of Poirot both a lovely recreation of a Christie novel, and a novel that\u2019s truly her own as well.\u00a0 Well done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden age detectives are the perfect characters to provide a continuation of a series.\u00a0 Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot \u2013 all have such well established character traits, and yet do not especially develop or change\u00a0 \u2013 that they can be taken by another writer and made fresh.\u00a0 Sophie Hannah is obviously familiar with Poirot … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,6,388,417,75,418,68,291],"class_list":["post-3785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-agatha-christie","tag-british","tag-golden-age-detection","tag-hercule-poirot","tag-sophie-hannah","tag-the-killings-at-kingfisher-hill","tag-traditional-mystery","tag-william-morrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3789,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3785\/revisions\/3789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}