The Monogram Murders

Did You Know?

• It is the thirty-fourth novel to feature Poirot.
• Curtain, the last Poirot novel published by Christie, was published in 1975.

Plot

Hercule Poirot was having coffee at a London establishment when a young woman named Jennie Hobbs approached him. She insisted that she would be killed soon and that no one could prevent it. Later, at his lodging, Poirot told this story to Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool. Catchpool was already working on a case involving three dead guests at the Bloxham Hotel: Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury, and Richard Negus. Each had been discovered in their own room with a monogrammed cufflink placed in their mouths. Hotel staff had found a note reading, "MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317." Poirot offered to help.

The next day, Poirot and Catchpool spoke with Luca Lazzari, the Bloxham's owner. They learned that all three victims had checked in on the same day, their rooms prepaid and booked in advance. All three came from a village called Great Holling. Negus had been engaged to Ida but left Great Holling in 1913 after the deaths of the former vicar, Patrick Ives, and his wife, Frances. Catchpool went to Great Holling to see Margaret Ernst, the widow of the most recent vicar. She explained what happened in 1913. Jennie, who had worked as a maid in the Ives household, started a rumor that Ives was extorting money from villagers by pretending to help them contact dead loved ones. Harriet, Ida, and Negus spread that rumor, which led to Ives being removed from his position. Frances then killed herself, and a devastated Ives did the same soon after.

Reviews

The book received mixed reviews. Alexander McCall Smith, writing for The New York Times, wrote that Hannah's Poirot "markedly" lived up to expectations. Andrew Wilson reviewed the book for The Independent and concluded that Poirot fans are "in safe hands" with Hannah's novel. Laura Thompson of The Guardian described Poirot as written by Hannah as "oddly lifeless" and that the book bore "very little resemblance" to an Agatha Christie book, being a "dense, complicated, vaguely old-fashioned detective story, containing diluted essence of Poirot."

Continuity with Christie's original stories

The story takes place in 1929, a time early in Poirot’s life in England, where he settled as a refugee after the Great War. This places it just after The Mystery of the Blue Train and a few years before Peril at End House. Arthur Hastings, Poirot’s usual companion, is missing. Instead, the first-person narrator is Edward Catchpool, a thirty-two-year-old Scotland Yard detective. Hannah chose not to bring back any of Christie’s familiar supporting characters.