The Monogram Murders: A New Hercule Poirot Mystery

Las segundas partes no siempre son buenas. Lo destacable es volver a leer una novela del exquisito detective Poirot, pero se nota la falta de la autora. El personaje esta demasiado afilado, el Inspector trata de imitar al relator de las novelas de Poirot, pero resulta demasiado torpe para el cargo que ocupa y sin iniciativa. La trama es compleja, similar a la de Christie pero con muchísimas vueltas de más. Es un libro para aquellos que tengan nostalgia de Poirot o Mrs Marple.

It's very, close-enough, Christie, but the new voice presents a darker picture, a touch of a more modern sensibility. Miss Marple would have loved the view of evil present in a village. Go for it! The Yard detective could be a little less stupid.

While Sophie Hannah will never replace Agatha Christie, for fans of the grand Dame and her Belgian detective, this is an enjoyable read. Poirot is in fine form and the plot was well developed. While I didn't completely guess the ending, I did get the main plan, and I think there were a few too many clues. However, all in all, this was a very good, holiday read.

The story was too long. The characters are not believable except for Poirot. The plot is too fantastical. The story line itself is rather fantastical and at some point I no longer cared about the resolution of the mystery and what happened ot the victims or the perps. This is the worst book of Agatha Christie (???) book I've ever read. I suspect that somebody bought Agatha Christie's name to sell the book.

Technically accurate as to a prose writing style. The author fails to capture the true personality of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Hercule Poirot comes off as an egotistical character without the warmth of regret that others are not up to his standard of thinking as Agatha Christie portrays him. He comes across very two dimensional.

I started reading Dame Agatha Christie's books when I was 12 yrs. old and my two favorite characters are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I've read almost all, if not all, of her books. I usually finish reading her books in 2 nights as I could never put them down. However, I found that not to be the case with this new book. I still liked it but I was not inclined to finish reading the book in one or two nights. It's still a good read and I'm glad Poirot is back, at least for now.

Terrible. Not even just not in the style of Agatha Christie but not even good as a stand alone. If the author wants to write period mysteries that's fine, but if she can't write in the same style with the same attention to detail why call it Agatha Christie? And what on earth were AC's heirs thinking?!?

Clearly not in the style or tradition of Agatha Christie. The character development is stunted and the plot endless. It is if she has taken the weaknesses of some of Christie's work and used them to developed her story.

Don't bother reading this book, unless you have insomnia. I agree with others; this isn't even a good imitation of a Poirot novel. In addition, the revelation was so convoluted and really preposterous, that I immediately vowed not to read any more by this author, then donated the book to the local library. Some things in this world are best left as they were.

The plot was overly complicated and convoluted. There was nothing wrong with the writing, but it didn't read as smoothly as a real Agatha Christie. Perhaps it would be best to do as Ms. Christie intended - to let Poirot stay dead.

The author places Hercule Poriot in a Diner eating regularly and also has him living in a Boarding House and sharing a room with someone. Anyone who is familiar with Hercule knows that simply would not happen. The story was interesting and nicely written.

I am a long standing Agatha Christie reader and fan. This book was okay but I struggled to finish it. It just seemed to try to hard. Read the real Agathas if you miss her writing. Especially if you haven't read them in a while.

This book is superficially Poirot with all of his cute little quirks. But the plot! It was not the clean, organized story that Agatha Christie would have told. It was unnecessarily complicated. It was adequate, but certainly not worthy of Poirot or of Agatha Christie.

I was very excited to read an Hercule Poirot mystery and this was not one. Changing a beloved character’s personality and even intellect to put your own “twist” on the character is so disappointing. It’s probably better to just create a new character.

This book proves that there is only one Agatha Christe. The plot itself was okay, but I thought the solution would never end. I know that Poroit can be a little long winded when revealing the who, what, and why, but this solution never seemed to end, and I didn't find it that believable.

The character development was not there. In the end, I knew no more about the characters than I could have gleaned from the first chapter. The story line was so thin that after reading the book, I was still confused as to what really happened. A big disappointment for me and in no way representative of Agatha Christie's skill.

This was a disappointment. For the most part the author captured Poirot's "voice" but that was it. Chritie's books never plodded, and this book did little else. A mule in horse harness describes this work. By the time the solution was revealed I could not have cared less. Too bad as I had hopes for this book.

Not a bad mystery, somewhat circuitous but I didn't find it especially Agatha Christie-like. I didn't connect with the policemman/sidekick, the voice of the book. Not sure I'll pursue other books by this author.

Pretty good mystery plot. Some echoes of Agatha Christie, but some characters more in keeping with P.D. James novels than Christie's. While Christie had an amazing gift for conveying maximum information regarding people and occurrences with a minimal number of words, Hannah is much more verbose. However, the mystery is interesting enough to keep you wading through the excess verbiage to learn the solution at the end. OK, but not quite Christie.

She doesn't quite have Poirot "down." His dialogue doesn't sound like Christie's character. The plot is too convoluted and often quite silly. Channeling a famous writer is risky, and Hannah doesn't make the grade.

Portions of the book were slow in developing and repeated others. Some of the repetition was necessay but not all and as such made it slow. Especially Jeannie's part. Her character at first was sympathetic but grew into boredom and then into frustration. I as a reader wanted her part to get done and over. It drug out way too long.

Disappointed in style of writing. The book read more like a script than a novel. With so much Agatha Christie out the I would have thought Miss Hannah would have used more imagination, as Agatha did, to sum things up. Don't miss with a master.

Christie's writing style and plot lines come alive in Sophie Hannah's talented hands. It was fun to read a new book, yet discover the same pompous Poirot preening beneath his famous moustache. That said, the plot was a little onerous and the twists seemed forced -- which never happens in Hannah's works.

A reasonable facsimile of an Agatha Christie, but nothing special. Slow-paced in a way I don't remember feeling about the real article. Not much glee in the gore nor the evil (of the victims and the perpetrators). And a lot snarkier attitude from Poirot. So perfectly good way to pass the time but not compelling.

Disappointing since Hercule Poirot and the new Hastings seemed to be caricatures of the genuine leading characters in the Christie novels. The plot started out strange and evolved into chaos so complete that it made no difference to me who killed whom. The entire premiss of the novel was of hate-ridden women in an English village. Since they themselves were caricatures of some of Christie's village gossips their motivations were simply unfathomable.

Like others, I found this book way too wordy, the plot so convoluted, it became annoying. I recalled thinking at one point, "Just get ON with it." I read the whole book only because once halfway through it, I was mostly curious how the heck the story could possibly wrap up. Turns out I was right. It didn't.

I was disappointed in this book. Ordered it after reading the reviews that sounded like it would be a lot better and closer to the clever Cristie style. I found this book frustrating with the constant referrals to how "clever" Poirot is while just using his refusal to reveal his thinking/ conclusions as a device to "pad" and extent the story. I gave 2stars because the story was OK, but would not buy another.

Well, if it had not been for the 'Christie' name, I would not have read this book - and having read it, I do not think I would recommend it. By and large, I felt that the flow was stretched and contrived, and lacked the finesse of the Agatha Christie novel.

I thought this book would be as concise as poirot is as a detective. I was disappointed. It is wordy, at least 50 pages too long and meanders rather that building suspense. Agatha Christi would be disappointed too.