February 2016 - Monogram Murders - Sophie Hannah

From Maggie:
I must admit to struggling a bit with this one. I'm not a great Hercule Poirot fan and found him a similarly tedious and pompous character as in the originals. But I suppose that's something of a tribute to the author who has maintained the Christie style. I'm just thankful that we didn't have to endure him waxing his moustaches in this one!
The other main character Catchpool , I found equally unsympathetic. What a wimp! Hopefully, a century on , our detectives have a bit more nous. But on the other hand he was facing an extraordinarily complex (and dare I say unrealistic), plot.
Having said all that I can appreciate that many of the characters were well drawn and the whole thing was well constructed although the pace of it was a bit slow for me.
My score is therefore 6

This book was slightly tedious. I wanted to make sense of the whole mystery, but Sophie Hannah kept introducing more  and more characters and more plots. In the end I couldn't see the wood for the trees, and even after I finished the book I kept going over it in my mind  trying to fathom out what was relevant and where the red herrings, and my, there were loads of these. All in all, I didn't really like this book. Hercule Poirot was very annoying by not sharing his thoughts with Detective Catchpool who was supposed to be in charge and what a dim-wit he was.  Catchpool seemed to be working on his own, not leading a team.  I got so annoyed that they didn't follow up important clues as they came along and went around the houses before delving into them. I felt all along that there were two plots, but the pair didn't realise this until halfway through the book.

Why didn't Jennie and her man just flee after the deed and set up a new life somewhere else?

Average of marks: 5.