The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

By Sophie Hannah

What it’s about?

The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot—legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile—returns to solve a fiendish new mystery. Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate, where Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. But there is a strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there.
 
The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached…

Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?

What I think:

I have read and enjoyed Sophie Hannah’s previous Poirot books so I was looking forward to this one. It’s been on my tbr list since it was published and I saw it in the library a couple of weeks ago so grabbed it. To be honest I was very disappointed.

The mystery is definitely intriguing but the characters are all so awful and the set up was so irritating that I nearly gave up.

The Peepers boardgame, the hysterical woman on the bus and the bus company itself are all really convoluted and definitely did not drag me in.

Hannah takes the incompetent policeman to the extreme with Inspector Catchpool. He is ridiculously inept. The book is told from his perspective and he despite that Poirot is completely rude to him he still seems to idolise him.

The Devonport family are hideously dysfunctional. They don’t like each other and they refuse to answer questions or answer in the most ridiculous way. I actually didn’t care who had killed Frank Devonport and who or why people were claiming it was them.

I stuck this one out but it really wasn’t for me.