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A review by starthelostgirl
The Monogram Murders by Agatha Christie, Sophie Hannah
2.0
I went into this book knowing that it would not be an Agatha Christie, so I don’t think that I am not unfairly comparing this book to her or being overly harsh in my criticism. I think that Hannah was able to capture her writing style and characters very well. However, I had some significant issues with this book.
First off is the length. The average Poirot audiobook is about 7 hours long, while this one was 11 hours long, and I absolutely feel like 4 hours of material could have been cut. It felt like a standard Poirot mystery stretched much longer than it had any right to be, so it became very repetitive and tedious. Hannah also mentioned Poirot’s little foibles so often that they became dull; Christie rarely mentioned “little grey cells” or the green gleam in Poirot’s eye so that they were special when they did appear, but in this they are both overused. Even if I had been satisfied by the conclusion, I was still bored for large stretches of the book where the same few facts were repeated over, and over, and over...
Hannah has replicated my least favorite aspects of the original Poirot mysteries, which is the clueless narrator (Hastings is replaced by Catchpool) who gets berated by Poirot for being so stupid. This dynamic doesn’t work here though, because while Hastings is just a friend of Poirot’s, Catchpool is supposed to be an elite Scotland Yard detective. It doesn’t make sense to have Poirot running circles around him while he does nothing except unknowingly make occasionally helpful remarks, because he is supposed to be an experienced murder detective himself. He comes off looking like an idiot. I think it would have been less infuriating to read about his incompetence if he wasn’t supposed to be good at this. I also could not have cared less about his childhood issues with death.
Ending without spoilers, I found the conclusion to be disappointing. I would not bother to read the second book, except I already have it checked out from the library and I feel guilty for returning an audiobook without listening to it since I know they’re limited in how many check-outs each book gets.
My biggest gripe with this book is the solution of the mystery, and there are SPOILERS ahead.
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.
.
.
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———SPOILERS———
.
.
.
.
.
While Agatha Christie often relied on extremely fortunate coincidences to pull off her plots, they were never this full of holes. Here are the problems I spotted:
1. The entire mystery hinges on the utter incompetence of Catchpool, who is so upset by seeing dead bodies despite it being his literal job that he forgets to call in the Medical Examiner until the NEXT MORNING. If the ME had been called in promptly, they would have been able to determine that the victims had been dead for much longer than it appeared, and the false alibi would have immediately been dismantled.
2. Rigor mortis would not allow for a body to be posed sitting upright and then moved to a laying position several hours after death, so the false alibi wouldn’t work in that way either.
3. I have no idea why the Lady would have posed for a formal portrait with her servant’s commemorative dishes. That doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. Poirot explicitly states they were kept in the servant’s quarters. It seems ludicrous that a noblewoman would borrow her maid’s pitcher set when having her portrait painted by one of the most well-known artists of the time.
4. It was never adequately explained why this all happened now. The motive was 16 years old - what drove them to act all these years later? I never really understood why these women were still so passionate about Patrick.
I found these points especially frustrating since they are nearly all things that Poirot himself has brought up in the original books!
First off is the length. The average Poirot audiobook is about 7 hours long, while this one was 11 hours long, and I absolutely feel like 4 hours of material could have been cut. It felt like a standard Poirot mystery stretched much longer than it had any right to be, so it became very repetitive and tedious. Hannah also mentioned Poirot’s little foibles so often that they became dull; Christie rarely mentioned “little grey cells” or the green gleam in Poirot’s eye so that they were special when they did appear, but in this they are both overused. Even if I had been satisfied by the conclusion, I was still bored for large stretches of the book where the same few facts were repeated over, and over, and over...
Hannah has replicated my least favorite aspects of the original Poirot mysteries, which is the clueless narrator (Hastings is replaced by Catchpool) who gets berated by Poirot for being so stupid. This dynamic doesn’t work here though, because while Hastings is just a friend of Poirot’s, Catchpool is supposed to be an elite Scotland Yard detective. It doesn’t make sense to have Poirot running circles around him while he does nothing except unknowingly make occasionally helpful remarks, because he is supposed to be an experienced murder detective himself. He comes off looking like an idiot. I think it would have been less infuriating to read about his incompetence if he wasn’t supposed to be good at this. I also could not have cared less about his childhood issues with death.
Ending without spoilers, I found the conclusion to be disappointing. I would not bother to read the second book, except I already have it checked out from the library and I feel guilty for returning an audiobook without listening to it since I know they’re limited in how many check-outs each book gets.
My biggest gripe with this book is the solution of the mystery, and there are SPOILERS ahead.
.
.
.
.
.
———SPOILERS———
.
.
.
.
.
While Agatha Christie often relied on extremely fortunate coincidences to pull off her plots, they were never this full of holes. Here are the problems I spotted:
1. The entire mystery hinges on the utter incompetence of Catchpool, who is so upset by seeing dead bodies despite it being his literal job that he forgets to call in the Medical Examiner until the NEXT MORNING. If the ME had been called in promptly, they would have been able to determine that the victims had been dead for much longer than it appeared, and the false alibi would have immediately been dismantled.
2. Rigor mortis would not allow for a body to be posed sitting upright and then moved to a laying position several hours after death, so the false alibi wouldn’t work in that way either.
3. I have no idea why the Lady would have posed for a formal portrait with her servant’s commemorative dishes. That doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. Poirot explicitly states they were kept in the servant’s quarters. It seems ludicrous that a noblewoman would borrow her maid’s pitcher set when having her portrait painted by one of the most well-known artists of the time.
4. It was never adequately explained why this all happened now. The motive was 16 years old - what drove them to act all these years later? I never really understood why these women were still so passionate about Patrick.
I found these points especially frustrating since they are nearly all things that Poirot himself has brought up in the original books!