BOOK: Hercule Poirot's Silent Night by Sophie Hannah - Empty barrels rattle the most ...

 What to expect?

- Christmas mystery set in 1931
- Dilapidated mansion
- Norfolk coast
- Eccentric rich family
- Manupilative mother who "loves drama" (Catchpool's mother)
- Murder at the local hospital

I was determined to find things to like about this book, and I will say that the prose is quite nice - it's clear and intelligent, and the setting and dialogue are period appropriate - but the story itself is annoying. The plot is nonsensical, the characters are all grating, unreasonable, and obnoxious, and their behaviour and motivations don't make any sense. Catchpool behaves like a sulky teenager, and Poirot seems like a pale imitation - surprised by clues and observations Catchpool noticed but Poirot missed, and easily browbeaten and bossed around by pretty much everyone. It's also annoyingly preachy, with characters being described as good Christians, un-Christian, and talk of blessings and divine intervention to spare a character yet another family squabble. And worst of all, it was boring. To explain in any more detail, I will have to give away spoilers, so proceed at your own risk beyond this point.

...

The story opens with Catchpool's insufferably domineering mother showing up under a fake name to bully her son and Poirot into a last minute change of holiday plans to travel to Frellingsloe "Frelly" House to humour a dying man's wish to play detective - but Arnold Laurier wants to solve the murder himself, he just likes the idea of having Poirot around twiddling his thumbs for the holidays. Mrs. Catchpool wants Poirot to come solve the case anyway, because she's a guest for Christmas there too, and is worried about her dear friend Vivienne, Arnold's theatrically maudlin widow-to-be. Poirot makes a weak attempt to protest but is completely carried along by the sheer force of Mrs. Catchpool's personality.

SO MANY THINGS DON'T MAKE SENSE!

- It's somehow perfectly reasonable for the two sisters to hate each other. One because her sister had the nerve to marry her husband's brother. The other because, having married into the family she now sees everything about it as hers, and resents her sister for "getting there first".

- The sisters' parents, the in-laws of the Laurier family, were inexplicably terrified that two sisters married to two brothers will be predictably disastrous and oppose the second sister's marriage until Arnold, the father of the two brothers, encourages them to embrace love over fear. The once loving sisters turn overnight into sniping shrews who despise each other, and the Surtees parents blame that bastard Arnold for his horrific advice.

- Both families appear to be wealthy, but for some unknown reason, the Surteeses ask to come stay with the Lauriers for a few months to sort their feuding daughters out, and the sweet and sunny Arnold demands in exchange for hosting the visit that his in-laws become their unpaid servants, AND THEY AGREE! They are bitter and resentful of their "master" and their forced subservience, but it never occurs to them to walk out on the deal. Instead they choose malicious compliance, serving up ghastly and inedible meals and being generally disgruntled.

- Arnold Laurier, who has been told he has only months to live but shows no outward sign of illness or infirmity, is scheduled to go to the hospital in the new year, but they've been holding a room empty for him since the beginning of September - you know, as hospitals do, because it's not like anyone else might need it in the interim. They also get their choice of rooms, and the siblings bicker furiously and at length, repeatedly, for MONTHS, about whether or not a view of the courtyard is a good thing or a terrible thing. If they're really looking for something to fight about, one of them should consider sleeping with the other one's spouse, just to make the beef seem more legitimate.

- Why do upper-crust 1930s matrons talk like golden age pirates all of a sudden? This is the second book I've read this month to do this. Was the whole "guts for garters" threat even a thing before Pirates of the Caribbean? Or was it a common British phrase among fancy old-timey people that I didn't know about?

Anyway...

- It's only a few days until Christmas, but the multiple trees sit in various rooms of the stately manor house, undecorated, and "wretched and forlorn". The Lauriers are extremely wealthy but also extremely cheap - they fire all paid household staff to save money for the heirs, and instead invite guests to their house and put them to work for free instead. The job of decorating is pushed onto Catchpool, with micromanagement from many family members, and the many pages spent describing this task are probably meant to feel festive but just end up feeling tedious.

- Someone slips a 2 page note under Poirot's door one night, which takes up 11 pages of the book at standard font size.

- Hercule is poisoned while at Frelly, and is admitted to the hospital to sleep it off, and the staff never consider that he might have been poisoned even though he is adamant that he has been poisoned. Silly detectives! They're always collapsing for no reason after being served a drink in the house of murder suspects. Pffft, poison... what nonsense. Also, Mrs. Catchpool poisoned Poirot for getting too close to solving the case? After dragging him there specifically to solve the case? And there's no consequence for poisoning Poirot, even from her cop son? (I'm pretty sure there was no consequence - I stopped reading after Catchpool wrote the fact in his notebook at the end, and I don't care enough to go back and keep reading to make sure).

- An engaged couple unexpectedly find out they're expecting a baby, but the wedding isn't planned for another year. Their perfectly reasonable parents fly into rage, fire their son from his job, and pressure their daughter to put the baby up for adoption. Instead of just... moving up the date of the wedding if it's that important to them? And instead of simply eloping, or telling both sets of parents to kick rocks, the young fiance commits suicide. The girl's parents suddenly have a change of heart, forgiving the pregnant daughter but disowning their other daughter who spilled the beans. Because she's the bad guy in all this. The shunned daughter changes her name, marries a wealthy man named Arnold Laurier, has a kooky family, and then, decades later, suddenly discovering her sister is a nurse at the same hospital (even though they've been living in the same town for all these years) where her husband has a room booked, she goes on a killing spree, murdering a random patient and her own beloved husband, all to prevent her sister from recognizing her. Yikes.

- It's not clearly stated but heavily implied that Vivienne/Iris has multiple personality disorder or disassociative personality disorder, and that it caused her murderiness, which is kind of gross.

- The jealous 60-something doctor finds it preposterous that the 30 year old curate might have a crush on Vivienne, a woman old enough to be his mother, while the doctor himself is engaged to marry a woman young enough to be his daughter, because that's totally normal and not at all preposterous.

- The same woman who was so desperate to keep her identity secret that she murdered two helpless, sick old men, one of whom her own husband, was awfully quick to abandon pretense and adopt a sly villain monologue and admit everything as soon as she was suspected. I knew it was her as soon as Poirot and Catchpool arrived on the scene.

The story didn't capture my interest. There is no rising tension, no believable conflicts or motives, no effective red herrings. A lot of case details show up in Catchpool's notes without seeming to come out in the story. And there is no satisfying resolution. The book actually often addresses its own logical flaws, and I think these inconsistencies are meant to be clues and to come off as compellingly building the mystery, but to be honest I just found them annoying. The book tries hard to set up scenarios for drama without considering whether they are plausible.

The fact that the Christie estate granted permission for the use of these characters by another author isn't necessarily indicative that the new franchise will do justice to the canon - I'm pretty sure Mike Myers had permission from the Suess estate to make the Cat In The Hat movie too.

No means, no opportunity, no motive, no investigation- just BS.

Bloated writing that stretched a (non) short-story to 360 pages.
Agatha Christie was the first author I picked up from the “adult” section of my municipal library. And after a gap of a decade+, I re-discovered her through her plays and BBC radio dramas. Add a few Poirot novels. For me, she is still the best crime fiction author - to date. Possibly, surpassed only by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in short stories.
It is a disgrace that her estate chose Sophie Hannah to extend the Poirot series. This was my second book by her. The first was picked for the sake of nostalgia. The second was bought purely out of hope. Finally, that hope has been extinguished. Compare this to the superb tribute paid by the re-imagined series “Sherlock” !
As a Christie fan I earnestly request her estate to discontinue the series.

G.R.