On the one hand, the discomfort: reading Death also hits happy people is it a betrayal of Agatha Christie, who took the trouble to kill the little Belgian detective with the hyperactive brain in Hercule Poirot leaves the stage, intended to be published after his death? On the other, the (guilty) pleasure: finding the character again in this fifth resurrection by Sophie Hannah, a novelist to whom Lady Agatha’s heirs allowed her to take up the pen of their ancestor. Let’s say that once we get past the shock of the narration (forget Hastings, he has not yet arrived in the setting; the detective’s foil and biographer is an inspector called Catchpool), we find a familiar Poirot. But if Sophie Hannah delivers here a more successful plot than the previous one (the painful Kingfisher Hill Murders), the story begins with the same problem: a soft starting point and a lot of trampling before the dough rises. Afterwards, the pleasure (guilty, again) is very present in these seasonal pages – since the novel takes place at Christmas.
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